The interior of the Abarth Grande Punto is a bit smarter than the Fiat version of the car, with some soft-touch materials on the dashboard and bespoke instrument designs. Customers upgrading to the ‘esseesse’ have a body-coloured plastic trim piece across the dashboard which makes it feel a bit more special. The steering adjusts for height and reach and the driver’s seat is height adjustable but the thick windscreen pillars can obscure visibility at the front.

While the Grande Punto is large for a small car, it isn’t the best packaged car of its size and has less legroom in the rear than you might expect. Front-seat occupants have plenty of room, however, and the Abarth has electric windows and air conditioning as standard. The large wheels generate quite a bit of road noise, especially the 18-inch alloys on the ‘esseesse’ model.

The exhaust note on this high-performance version is also rather prominent, but owners will probably be happy to compromise because of its racy quality.