SA Road Tests

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This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. I drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under real-world South African conditions. Most, but not all, the vehicles driven are world cars as well, so what you read here possibly applies to the models you get where you live.

My most recent drive is on the home page. Archived reviews and opinion pieces are in the active menu down the left side. Hover your cursor over a heading or manufacturer's name and follow the drop-down.


We experience the 2015 Alfa Romeo 4C coupé

Stripped, tiny, sexy, fast

Posted: 11 May 2015

The cheat sheet
Price: R1 050 000 basic, R1 085 000 as tested with red leather seats and tri-coat metallic paint
Engine: 1742 cc, DOHC, 16-valve, turbocharged four-cylinder
Power: 177 kW at 6000 rpm
Torque: 350 Nm between 2200 and 4250 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 4.5 seconds
100 km/h to zero: 36 metres
Maximum: 258 km/h
Real life fuel consumption: About 7.5 l/100 km
Tank: 40 litres
Luggage: 110 litres
Bespoke SA dealerships: 7
Warranty and maintenance: 3 years/100 000 km   

Loud, brash, aggressive, in your face and twitchy: not the driver – the car.

Four C, corporate collaboration between Alfa Romeo design and Maserati manufacture, is all that and more. To call it an exercise in supercar minimalism is taking understatement to undreamed-of brevity.
To look at, it’s tiny - even more so than pictures indicate. And it’s built chunky like a bulldog; 3989 mm long on a wheelbase of 2380 mm, 1864 wide and 1183 mm low.

Let’s clarify a few things: There are cars offering similar straight-line performance, with superior equipment, for less money. That’s not the point. This isn’t a regular production Alfa Romeo built for the masses. It’s a clean-sheet supercar built to performance targets and subject to defined parameters.

Rule One is that a supercar must have a power-to-weight ratio of, or bettering, four kilograms per unit of horsepower. That is not negotiable. The second requirement was that it should be an affordable supercar for Alfisiti, so there was no question of building to superlative levels then increasing power to compensate. Currency pressure revved the   R870 000 launch price up to an eye-dampening R1 050 000, so the affordable part went the way of last summer’s holiday romance. But one might find comfort in that traditional supercars still cost three or four times as much.

A perfect candidate engine was already available – Alfa’s own 1742 cc, all-aluminium, twin cam, four-cylinder turbomotor – as fitted to the Giulietta 1750 TBi Quadrifoglio Verde. That fine piece of kit delivers 177 kilowatts or 240 horsepower, setting the target mass limit at 960 kilograms; less than your average little city car. Colin Chapman, founder of Lotus, is famously quoted as saying that if you cannot add horsepower, you must add lightness. So they did. The final product weighs in at 895 kg totally dry.

What they did: The monocoque is made from pre-impregnated carbon fibre, precisely aligned for maximum strength, vacuum bag moulded and cured in an autoclave. Stronger, lighter and easier to shape than steel, it weighs just 65 kilograms.

Aluminium was chosen for the roof reinforcement cage and front and rear beams. Redesigned struts, replacing traditional box sections, are lighter and safer. Cobapress, combining the advantages of press forging with those of casting, adds strength while compressing the material to close any remaining porosity. Welding is by means of cold metal transfer to eliminate distortion while filling all gaps. The bell sections of the hybrid front discs are of aluminium too.

Sheet moulding compound, a pre-impregnated polyester and fibreglass thermosetting material, is compression moulded into body panels and cured in-process. Its specific gravity is just over half that of aluminium. Apart from granting greater styling freedom, it doesn’t deform in minor collisions, is resistant to chemical and atmospheric agents and disperses sound efficiently for greater user comfort.

Injected polyurethane, 20-percent lighter than steel, was chosen for the complex shapes of bumpers and fenders. Then they made the glassware ten-percent thinner to save even more weight.

Redesigned intake and exhaust systems and die-cast block inserts helped shave 22 kg of engine mass, while locating it behind the passenger compartment rendered the traditional propeller shaft no longer necessary.

Aluminium foot pedals and passenger bracing box, stripped down (no height adjusters; no electric motors; minimal padding, but still comfortable) carbon fibre seats are covered in fabric although leather is a R15 000 option. No power assistance for the very direct steering helped too. Then they fitted a simple air conditioner with controls straight out of your sister’s little city car and dumped all unnecessary cubbies and storage bins, although they did leave a couple of cup holders and a 12-volt socket. A music centre with Bluetooth connectivity boasts three accessory plugs (iPod, USB and auxiliary) on short cables.

Because the engine is not over the front wheels, steering heft is lighter than on my elderly Corolla 1300. The lack of assistance is awkward only within the first metre or so of movement from standstill. After that, it’s direct, tactile and responsive. The car becomes a living thing; communicating directly with muscle, mind and soul. You cannot buy that feeling in a German techno-drone.

Race-derived, lightweight sports suspension enables lateral acceleration of up to 1.1g while competently sized, perforated and ventilated, disc brakes (305x28 mm in front and 292x22 mm behind) enable maximum deceleration at  1.25 g.

Adding to the excitement is Alfa’s familiar DNA selector with D meaning dynamic, N for natural and A for all-weather. But there’s a bonus. Pushing beyond D (to double-D?) gives you Race, wherein ESC switches off to return only under harsh braking and ASR takes a rest. Only the Q2 differential control remains active to help you out of fast corners.

Then they chose tyres: Standard 205/45 R17 (front) and 235/40 R18 (rear) Pirelli P-Zero rubberware was developed especially for this car. If those aren’t big enough for you, a couple of 18- and 19-inch combos are available optionally.

The gearbox is Alfa Romeo’s six-speed, dual clutch, TCT unit with paddles and launch control, driving the back wheels (obviously) through an electronic limited slip differential. It deserves an essay on its own. To begin, there is no shift lever on the console where you expect one; nor even a little Mercedes-style wand on the steering column – just four buttons controlling neutral, forward, reverse and auto/manual. Park selects automatically as the engine is switched off.

Second, it’s so intuitive in operation it’s almost scary. Gears change, with a blip for downshifts, exactly as you would – no unnecessary early upshifts for example. And it reacts to match your road speed as you drive; slow down and it downshifts. Dab the brakes to settle the car on its suspension as you arrive at a corner and it gears down accordingly. As you speed up it holds the lower gear until an upchange really becomes appropriate.

I eventually gave up on manual mode with paddles because automatic did it better. It’s the only auto-box I would consider abandoning my love affair with stick shifting for.

Summary: Its ride is harsh on even mildly rough asphalt, speed bumps need to be taken cautiously, it accelerates like a demon, its sound track makes your heart sing, it brakes powerfully with decent modulation, it hangs on forever and its steering reacts like a living being. Sadly, it’s too loud, brash, aggressive, in-your-face and twitchy to live with everyday.

But I want, make that need, one for lost weekends and summertime adventures.

Test car from FCA SA press fleet


What We Do

This is a one-man show, which means that every car reviewed is given my personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every test car goes through real world driving; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.

I do my best to include relevant information like real life fuel economy or a close mathematical calculation, boot size or luggage space, whether the space is both usable and accessible, whether life-sized people can use the back seat (where that applies), basic specs of the vehicle and performance figures if they are published. In the case of clearly identified launch reports, fuel figures are of necessity the laboratory numbers provided with the release material. If I ever place an article that doesn't cover most things, it's probably because I have dealt with that vehicle at least once already, so you will be able to find what you want in another report under the same manufacturer's heading in the menu on the left.

Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so they can see I do actually exist.

Comments?
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