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WE all know someone like this…

Five foot nothing, sporting less muscle than a budgie’s lip and after downing three pints of Stella, he suddenly turns into ten men and wants to fight anybody.

That’s the Abarth 595 Competizione, that is.

It’s a shouty, in-your-face little blighter and while it only drinks unleaded, it’s always willing to pick a scrap with cars twice its size.

Like all the best things in life, the Abarth 595 makes no sense whatsoever.

But, unlike the aforementioned, fighty pub dwarf, the Abarth attracts an almost unnerving amount of female attention. I have never experienced being photographed in traffic (by women) as much as happened the other week in the 595.

I even caught one woman and her mate taking a selfie with it outside Tesco. Tragic.

Forget your phallus-compensator traditional sports car – they just attract men in anoraks – if you want a middle-aged woman magnet, a scarlet 595 is what you want, clearly.

Even at tick-over it’s shouty. The sports exhaust (made louder by activating the dash-mounted “sports” button) farts and burbles like a boat’s outboard motor with the sort of booming resonance that makes conversation behind the car almost impossible.

Inside, the massive bucket front seats take up half the interior space with their heavily winged backs and deep side bolsters.

Clamped by the vice-like grip of those seats – which are mounted a bit too high for most people’s liking – the view ahead is dominated by the fat, button strewn Alcantara and leather covered flat-bottomed steering wheel. It’s a dramatic view – more supercar than shopping car.

The noise inside is just as shouty as the view. Under load the turbocharged engine barks and growls, the tail pipes emit a ripping, hissing sound and on the over-run it spits, crackles and pops like a Group B rally car. It’s not all fur coat and no knickers, though.

It is comically fast. By that, I mean the sort of fast that makes you laugh. The trade-off for putting 180bhp through those 17in front wheels and fat tyres is a lot of torque steer over changing surfaces.

At least the fat steering wheel allows you to wrestle it into some sort of submission.

The Koni suspension appears to be constructed from solid pig iron. There’s not a lot of give.

If you are of the finer sex, you’ll want to wear your best sports bra before travelling in a 595 and you’ll definitely not want to apply mascara on the move vision.

But this rock-solid spring and damper combo does mean the 595 corners flatter than a trampled pancake. There’s masses of grip too.

It’s as overbraked as it is overpowered and oversprung, too. Massive Brembo four-pot calipers up front scrub off speed with the lightest of toe-touch. Obviously, said brake calipers are painted a shouty red.

I’m struggling to think of another car that typifies its country of origin better than an Abarth 595, it is just so Italian in the way that it is so totally absorbed in the aesthetic.

I spent the first couple of days with it wondering who on earth would buy a twenty grand, 140mph Fiat 500. Too expensive to insure for the yoof, too cramped inside for most big-boned gents. But now it’s all clear. Middle-aged women Abarth 595.

And what finer way to indulge your mid-life crisis? if you value your adore the