Alfa Romeo 4C Spider 2015 Review

Alfa Romeo’s 4C sports car is an acquired taste. It’s raw, raucous and exciting – alas, not always in a good way. Busy even on smooth roads -- when it gets bumpy it’s a handful – it follows cambers and road irregularities and requires constant driver input. A relaxing drive it’s not.

A large part of the issue is the car’s elemental nature. In developing the 4C as an ultra-light, ultimately focussed sports car, Alfa’s engineers eschewed any steering assistance. Steering geometry that aids stability and manual steering don’t go well together – well, not unless you have arms like Arnie.

We found out all of this when I first drove the car on roads around Alfa’s test centre in Balocco in Italy in March last year. When the coupe launched Down Under, the report card was pretty much the same.

It probably won’t surprise you then that I have the same criticisms of the near-mechanically identical 4C Spider – the ‘open-air’ version of the 4C, just released in Europe and due to arrive in Australia from November at a price yet to be confirmed.

Alfa Romeo builds just 17 4Cs per day on an assembly line within the Maserati plant in Modena. It’s a hands-on facility with barely a robot to be seen. The fact that annual capacity is just 3000, and Spiders will make up less than one-third of that, makes this review somewhat moot. Alfa will sell every one it makes – worldwide and Down Under.

That makes the Spider and the 4C a success. What it doesn’t do is make it a great car.

Full technical details of the mid-engined turbocharged 1.8-litre 4C were detailed in our local launch review. I won't regurgitate them here.

In the transition to the Spider, Alfa did not need to strengthen the carbon tub (monocoque) but did beef up the windscreen frame and A-pillars. These are now a single carbon-fibre lay-up instead of the SMC (sheet moulded composite) and welded steel tube assembly of the coupe.

The more obvious difference between Coupe and Spider are the cloth roof section and re-profiled engine cover and rear lid. If anything, the changes make the already handsome 4C even better looking.

Alfisti will also note the Spiders we drove featured the simpler headlights of the US-market Coupe. Also featured on just one of the three examples we grabbed for a day prior to last week’s unveiling of the Giulia was an extra low-level left-hand side engine compartment “cooling duct”. This is a US market add-on (to improve dual-clutch gearbox cooling), says Alfa Romeo, and may not feature on Aussie Spiders.

Although Alfa Romeo would not confirm the fact, there seem to have been running changes on the 4C Coupe that have made their way to the Spider. The TCT twin-clutch gearbox’s calibration was better on the cars and ‘luxuries’ like adjustable seat slides and backrests have been added.

What hasn’t improved in this area is the seat's lateral, back and thigh support. For a car that claims to be able to better 1.1g in lateral acceleration (cornering force) there’s next to no lateral support. In a car as uncompromising as this, there’s no excuse for this.

I guess the plus side is easy access, at least for a compact two-seater. There are no big sills to negotiate and with the seats slid back there’s plenty of space for larger drivers. The steering wheel is adjustable for both reach and rake.

In what I suspect is a front-end geometry change in an effort to tame the darty steering response of the early production cars we drove, weighting at slow speeds is now heavier – significantly so. This could be a problem for slighter drivers (note non-gender specific reference!) as it now requires plenty of muscle to manoeuvre the car at parking speeds.

If the effect at higher speeds was positive, I’d excuse the trait – this is a sports car after all. Alas there’s scant improvement. At Aussie open-roads speeds and higher you’re constantly making corrections and the car, although now less nervous, remains very susceptible to sidewinds, road irregularities and camber.

The nature of our first drive of the Spider precludes any real impressions of anything other than straight-line performance. A relaxing autostrada cruiser the 4C Spider is not. But almost 600km from Balacco to Modena and back also left yours truly in no doubt that there are quieter, more comfortable and better equipped sports cars on the market today.

But few have the dramatic aural intake signature of the 4C, nor the signature turbo four pop and whistle. On the right road this would be endearing…

And make no mistake, although the 1.8-litre engine (like its Giulietta QV counterpart) takes some time to build boost and come on full song, when it’s bubbling there’s serious midrange urge available. Coupled with the relatively low mass of the 4C, this should be one of the most useable real-world combinations on sale today. Should be…

The Spider’s raison d’etre is it’s roof – or lack there of. The set-up is a simple manual affair which, by virtue of its design, self tensions. There are release points at the centre of the windscreen header and on each end of each roof rail. Once you’re familiar with the process it shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes to remove or replace.

Removed, you can roll up the panel and stow it in the 4C’s single luggage space (under the rear deck behind the engine). If you plan to stow the roof, pack light… In fact, always plan to pack light – we filled the space with one briefcase, a small backpack and the roof.

There’s good and bad news about motoring with the roof off. The good news is there’s very little buffeting and noise levels don’t seem significantly different from when driving the 4C all buttoned up.

The bad news is that at all times the 4C’s open-road noise levels border on cacophonic. If the engine’s not assaulting you with turbo and intake noise, there are high levels of wind noise and little if any attenuation of road and suspension din.

Alfa Romeo won’t yet say just how much a premium you’ll pay for the 4C Spider over the $89,000 Coupe when the car arrives Down Under later this year. Our guess is that the brand will endeavour to keep the Spider under $100K.

In terms of many of the measures we use to critique new cars, that’s a lot of money to pay for what is essentially a kit car assembled in a factory. There are other sporty convertibles that are as fast but much, much easier to live with.

On the other hand, the 4C is destined to be one of, if not the most focussed modern Alfa Romeo. And if Sergio Marchionne’s volume expectations for the marque are met, one of the rarest.

What price for a collectable mid-engined Italian?

2015 Alfa Romeo 4C Spider pricing and specifications:
Price: $95,000 (estimated)
Engine: 1.75-litre four-cylinder turbo-petrol
Output: 177kW/350Nm
Transmission: Six-speed dual-clutch automatic
Fuel: 6.8L/100km (ADR Combined)
CO2: 157g/km (ADR Combined)
Safety: Not tested