Capsule Review: Alfa Romeo 4C

In an age when $25K buys a substantial chunk of performance, cars like the MX-5 and the FR-S/BRZ seem like anachronisms. They don’t make a ton of power. They’re not particularly practical or fuel efficient. They’re not all that flashy—cute, maybe, but not flashy. Once upon a time, such cars existed to maintain balance in a world of meandering muscle, but in the evolved and capable body of modern performance automobiles, they’re merely the vestigial remnants of a once long tail of affordable sports cars.

One could reasonably argue that the outlook is even more bleak if you jump ahead a few tax brackets. Take a gander at what 60 grand will buy you these days—Z51 Corvettes, M3s, C63s, hopped-up TTs and enough letters and numbers behind pony car monikers to sustain an episode of Sesame Street—and we’ll find that even the flyweights here are pushing 3,400lbs. If you want featherweight performance, you compromise on a Porsche Cayman (which in its most aggressive guise will spec out well north of this price range) or cross your fingers on a lightly-used Lotus Elise.

Now you have another choice. Enter the Alfa Romeo 4C. 227hp. 2,465lbs. Carbon tub. Manual steering. And damn is it ever gorgeous.

I’ve seen the Alfa compared to 1970s and ’80s era Italian supercars. That’s not quite right. I suppose it’s accurate inasmuch as you don’t expect a Ferrari that is a decade away from AARP eligibility to be particularly luxurious by modern standards, but the Alfa is spartan because Fiat has to sell it for roughly one-sixth the price of a reasonably-equipped 458, not simply because it’s en vogue.

If you get the chance to sit in a 4C, reach down behind the floating center stack and get a firm grip on it, then give it a little jostle. And then take a few minutes to put it all back the way it was when you found it, and don’t mention my name when the salesman asks just why the hell you’re dismantling the dash board of his seventy-thousand-dollar Launch Edition.

To be fair, the interior is not a bad place to be. The seats offer minimal adjustment, but they’re beautifully sculpted and very supportive. The gauges place all relevant information front and center, and the transmission controls, while unintuitive at first blush, are incredibly straightforward after a minute or two of fiddling. The same is true of the rest of the important controls, but those are really the only controls you’ll find at all. Unlike the hieroglyphically-overencumbered center console of a Porsche or Audi, the 4C boasts maybe twenty things that click, spin or toggle in the area between the vents and the hand brake (yeah, that’s a manual hand brake). And trust me, you’ll think that number’s high at first glance.

Indeed, the 4C is not a luxury car. It’s rowdy and raucous and fun as hell to drive. It’s a mid-engined performance coupe that pops and farts and squeals and generally makes the old Cayman R feel like a car for stuffy old German clerks. One doesn’t put the dual-clutch gearbox in “Drive;” rather, one pushes the button marked “1” on the center console and waits for something to happen. Nothing does. The 4C won’t idle forward on a flat surface.

So you give it some gas, and the engine blats at you from behind your head, and suddenly you don’t give one single damn whether the HVAC controls will still be holding on for dear life by the time you’re done, because all you’ll want to do is chuck the 4C’s nose at every corner you can find until you’ve found them all and then go back and do it again. I’ve never before driven a car so lively and pointable and just plain magical.

Leave the nannies on and the 4C will make you look and feel like Senna incarnate. Turn them off and it will rotate gracefully and predictably as the unassisted steering transmits every iota of feedback in response to your every miniscule input. Like the FR-S/BRZ, the 4C exchanges ultimate grip for attainable limits. Unlike the FR-S/BRZ, the 4C is a complete laugh when you begin to explore those limits. It is the embodiment of the slow-car-fast formula taken to the reasonable limit of affordable tire and suspension technology with just enough of a nod to practicality and convenience. Pirelli calls the P Zero AR a “three-season” tire, and indeed the tread appears more than rain-ready. Short of a snowfall, the Alfa should serve you well in most conditions.

So, back to our little pricing dilemma. Can the 4C hang in the muscle-friendly, upper-middle-income American market? Believe it or not, I think it can. It’s no slouch, after all, running a low-4-second 0-60 and a high-12-second 1/4-mile isn’t enough to hang with GT500s and ZL1s in the open, but those numbers are plenty respectable. This, in my opinion, where my own sports car analogy falters a bit. When you put those figures into the context of the class, the Alfa is plenty quick enough to keep pace—something that is difficult to say about the MX-5 and FR-S.

The ultimate test for the 4C won’t be found among the inevitable slew of track comparisons that will be conducted in the coming months. Rather, the 4C needs to be accepted by customers. It needs to be seen and and wanted and lusted after. Lotus can sell a car to Bruce, the Internet track day hero who bores expensive escorts with stories about passing 911s in his favorite braking zone. Alfa Romeo needs to once again resonate with luxury buyers—buyers like Ronaldo, the playboy who serial-dates 10s for their personalities. Without that segment of buyer, the 4C is just another expensive, borderline-uninsurable used car to be lusted after by the up-and-coming Bruces of the world.

(The author was one of many members of the automotive press invited to attend Fiat-Chrysler’s “What’s New” drive event. The company provided lodging, meals and transportation to and from the venue.)