Top Gear once described Alfa Romeo cars as cars that you wouldn’t recommend your friends to buy, but you do want one yourself. I have never had any interest in Alfa Romeo’s. I did love the 8C, but it was out of reach, and anything else looked boring.
But then came the 4C… prototype models looked stunning. And the entire concept was simply perfect: to hell with anything that weighs more than a gram and you can do without. Back to basics. Airco? Only if you want it. Anything else is simply missing. Boot space? Forget it; you don’t want to carry that extra weight anyway. There are two seats, yes, but you’d tell your girlfriend to stay home because she’s too heavy. The result is a 900 kg car and with a 240 BHP turbo-charged 1.8L engine the power-to-mass ratio falls almost into supercar league. The carbonfibre body actually does push it into supercar league. UK car magazines compared the car to the Porsche Cayman, but anywhere else in the world the 4C was much cheaper. A cheap supercar? And Italian? For me things were clear as a rock: I was going to sell my Ferrari and buy an Alfa 4C. I immediately registered for the Launch Edition version of the car, and waited for its release.
And then came the test drive.
Stunningly looking it is. Despite a few flaws in the design of the production series (those headlights are simply awful, and the front really could have been a tad longer), it looks like something special. People stopped at traffic lights to walk around the car, admire it, and give compliments. And when you take off from that traffic light, you take off…. It is very fast in a straight line, and the double-clutched gearbox really helps in this. The gear box is great. Yes it fails to shift sometimes but who cares; you’re driving an Alfa and you could have known this, so you forgive it.
When you get inside though, things change. You now understand why the price is what it is: the interior looks, and is, cheap. The plastic dashboard and cheap looking radio I can live with. But the steering wheel is absolutely terrible, and has no place in a car like this. The car is so small that you feel a bit cramped inside it. You’re always sitting against the side doors, and there is no space at all behind the seats to put some stuff like a small bag. The gearshift handles are plastic as well and attached to the steering wheel rather than to the steering column (great for the race track, but not on the road), and they gave me a bit of a ‘clinical’ feeling.
Handling? Strange. It corners extremely well. In fact, too well in my opinion. This is great for the race track, but I would really have loved more oversteer, and a more playful character. With a less than 900 kg car you would expect that it behaves like a go-kart. Instead it seems to stick to the road, have understeer and even braking feels a bit heavy. How can this be? And yes, there is no power steering. Purists will love it. But as I mentioned in my Ferrari 348 review, some cars really can profit from power steering, and I think the 4C is one of them. Alternatively, you can work out a bit more in the gym and get some more power into your arms. Some reviewer of the 4C complain about too much feedback and nervous behaviour. It is true, but I think it matches the nature of the car: this is not a GT car, and as such I think having much feedback is good.
Sound? Also strange. It seems to be different all the time. Outside it sounds really well, but inside you hardly hear the exhaust. Sometimes you do, but sometimes you hear a rattling engine, or a sissing turbo sound. Best to drive with the window open, or buy the 4C Spider. What is really irritating though is to drive on the highway and have a constant low tone resonating into your ears, because at that speed you suddenly do hear the exhaust. Even the spider version won’t help here, as all you’d hear is wind.
I drove back with mixed feelings. What we have here is a cheap supercar that looks fantastic, and would surely be amazing to drive on the racetrack. But on the road…. I miss the sensation of a bonkers sport exhaust that you hear inside the cabin, I hate the steering wheel that doesn’t give me a nice feeling when I grab it, and I miss a crazy character of oversteer and drifting through corners when I want to.
The result is that I kindly declined the offer. I ended up ordering the Porsche Boxster Spyder instead, a car that does have an amazing sound, amazing handling, amazing feeling, an amazing manual gearbox, and I never regretted it.
Mind you, I do not have any friends who did buy a 4C. Because if they did, I would be jealous.
Ciao!
Robin
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