When cars become more about evoking the senses than serving the purpose of mobility, enter the Alfa Romeo 4C Spider, a car so unashamedly full of character that it makes no excuses for its shortcomings.
The 4C Spider is set apart from the coupe by a few detail changes. The addition of a fabric roof and a redesigned engine cover certainly gives the car the right sort of look. The roof itself is essentially a fabric section that you could remove manually, much like a Lotus Elise’s. But unlike the Lotus, removing and attaching the roof is actually a pretty easy and quick process, making the switch pretty manageable.
Elsewhere, the 4C gains 45kg of body strengthening to compensate for the loss of the roof, but the car still slips under the one-tonne mark thanks to the use of a carbon-fibre tub chassis and aluminium components in the front and rear subframes, which make for a very light and agile car.
Power comes from the same 237bhp 1.75-litre turbo four-cylinder engine as in the 4C coupe, while the six-speed TCT twin-clutch gearbox is also carried over. As you would expect from such a lightweight car, acceleration is rapid once the turbo kicks in, with Alfa claiming 0-62mph in 4.5 seconds. The Spider’s DNA switch allows you to change between Dynamic, Natural and All Weather settings for different throttle response sand gearshift modes.
The 4C can be very entertaining on the right road, but given that most of our driving was in the city, the unassisted steering wheel began to wear out its novelty. While we’re all up for grabbing the bull by the horns, the Alfa’s short wheelbase and wide track setup made the front wheels a bit uneasy around uneven roads.
The one sensation we defy any petrol-head to get tired of is the drama and feeling you get from the spool of the turbo before kicking in and firing the Alfa down the straight. Saying that, the engine isn’t very responsive in low revs, and the power really has to be kept in check so you can exploit the car’s power, which in the city, where this car will spend most of it’s time, is pretty tiring and not quite achievable.
Alfa Romeo has a lot riding on the 4C, and rightly so. The car is a lot of fun to drive and most certainly grabs attention anywhere you go. However, this car wasn’t developed to be just a good-looking car; it was built to perform. In that sense, it falls quite short from expectations.
Given the right sort of road, preferably a track, this car would be a thrill to drive around. However, given that the car isn’t a track-focused car, and we don’t all drive on tracks daily, the 4C just doesn’t deliver the right sort of thrills one expects from a car that’s close to £60,000. This price tag and performance puts it in direct competition with other strong contenders, like the Porsche 718 and Lotus Elise, which incidentally cost less.
www.alfaromeo.co.uk