I am #blessed to be in possession of one of these for the next few days and I’m pretty jazzed about it. You’ve read Raph’s accounts of the Alfa Romeo 4C on the track and around Manhattan, and now I’ll give you my perspective after putting it on some of Texas’ best back roads.
Here’s the best way I can describe it: You ever play one of the Pokemon games? Given what I know about the demographics of our readers, I bet a good number of you have. You know how you start with this cute little plebe monster, and you make him level up and “evolve” into something better and crazier and more badass?
If you made a Fiat 500 Abarth fight a whole bunch and evolve into a mid-engined, rear-wheel drive sports car, you’d get the 4C. It’s the Charizard to the Abarth’s Charmeleon. (I had to look that one up, it’s been a while since the late 90s.)
In short, I’m a fan so far. It’s a delightfully bizarre car in a lot of ways, from the exposed carbon fiber tub and bolts inside to the strange dual cluch-manual steering setup. It’s loud and fast and way more raw than you expect.
Things I like: It looks sexy as hell, especially in white; it’s damn quick with a 0-60 time of around 4 seconds, and believe me, you feel every moment of it; superb handling; it’s strange and quirky and is like nothing else on the market right now in terms of character; puts a huge smile on my face every second I’m in it.
Things I don’t like as much: Definitely an acquired taste (albeit one I have); stripped-out interior takes some getting used to; manual steering isn’t actually as great as I expected; thrashy dual-clutch gearbox in normal driving; rear visibility basically does not exist; not convinced it’s a better buy than similarly-priced sports cars.
This one comes in at $69,945. Expect a full take next week. In the meantime, what do you want to know about it?
Contact the author at patrick@jalopnik.com.