HomeCar CultureAbarth resumes 70th anniversary tour of Europe

Abarth resumes 70th anniversary tour of Europe

Event started in February but was stalled by pandemic lockdown

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Stalled by the coronavirus pandemic for several months, the Abarth “Tour of Europe in 1949 Hours,” being staged to celebrate the Italian tuner’s 70th anniversary, finally has resumed.

The event had begun in late February in the Dutch village of Lijnden and had visited Belgium and had arrived in Germany when the lockdown went into effect. The Abarth 695 70th Anniversary special edition car then returned to the company’s Heritage Hub in Torino, Italy, to wait out the pandemic.

“We’re restarting the powerful engine of the limited edition created to celebrate the 70th birthday of the Scorpion brand, after the prolonged pit stop over the last few months due to the lockdown,” the company said in its announcement. 

“It’s now ready to get back on the road for… a celebration of the Scorpion brand’s history, together with a love for challenge and the constant search for performance.”

Route for the 1949-hour tour of Europe

“The restart of our European journey is another positive message of getting back to normal,” added Luca Napolitano, head of Abarth brands. “We’ll share feelings and passion with the nearly 130,000 fans in the Abarth community and more than 80 clubs that will bear witness to and support the tour. 

“The enthusiasm for our brand, and especially for the #Abarth 695 70° Anniversario special series, is also confirmed by its commercial success: more than half of the 1,949 limited edition models have already been sold.”

The 1,949 hours duration for the drive through seven European countries comprises nearly 80 days and was chosen in tribute to the adventure recounted in Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, Abarth said. 

The numbers have added meaning since 1949 was the year in which Carlo Abarth, director of the Cisitalia factory racing team, founded his motorsports program and road-car tuning shop. Abarth chose the scorpion, the astrological sign for his birth month, as his company’s logo.

Larry Edsall
Larry Edsall
A former daily newspaper sports editor, Larry Edsall spent a dozen years as an editor at AutoWeek magazine before making the transition to writing for the web and becoming the author of more than 15 automotive books. In addition to being founding editor at ClassicCars.com, Larry has written for The New York Times and The Detroit News and was an adjunct honors professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.

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