Drumroll please: an Abarth 500e will cost you… £38,695

The Abarth 500e - the Fiat-but-hotter brand’s answer to the car TG ran for six months last year, is to be priced from £38,695 in the UK, a figure we should categorise as ‘bold’.

Let’s not forget that the Fiat 500e starts from more than 10 grand less at £28,195, and that a far more capable, bog standard Model 3 isn’t much more at circa £43k. Jeepers.

In fairness, the car you see here is the Scorpionissima launch edition that gets everything Abarth can throw at it, including 18-inch diamond-cut wheels, steel pedals, Alcantara seats, (which are heated up front, along with the windscreen), auto climate control and low beam headlights, a 360-degree reversing camera, JBL audio system and that 10.25/7.0in touchscreen-and-driver-display combo.

Oh, and that incredibly high-vis paint.

More important perhaps are the headline stats: 149bhp and 173lb ft for 0-62mph in seven seconds flat, which, Abarth claims, makes its 500e a whole second quicker than the Abarth 695 around the Miso Alfa test track in Italy. Phwoar.

First deliveries are expected in June, and Abarth has already received some 1,500 pre-orders across Europe against a launch-spec build run of 1,949 units. That’d be the year the Abarth brand was born, FYI.

You tempted at that price?