When people ask me what my dream car is, I have a very hard time answering. Normally I start playing 20 Questions with whoever asked me to figure out the details of this hypothetical vehicle. “Do I have to pay for gas? How are the roads where I live? Can I garage it? Do I have kids?” Once I’ve whittled down the situation I can make an educated guess. Even still, the question tends to produce smoke from my eyes accompanied by a mechanical grinding noise.
However, last week at Jake’s Pickup a member of the Cars and Coffee group brought an Alfa Romeo 4C. Like a flock of bewildered geese we wandered out into the rain-soaked parking lot to -ooh and -aah at the deep-red, deeply Italian two-seater. For almost an hour we gawked, beads of water covering the Alfa and dripping down it’s curvy sides in some weirdly seductive dance.
I am unashamed to declare that on that very wet Thursday morning I discovered a new favorite car. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. A BMW M2 and Porsche 911 shared the same lot but went largely unnoticed by me (not to say they aren’t pretty as well!!). I loved the wheels and the red brake calipers that had ‘Alfa Romeo’ painted on them. The extra-wide booty housed the extra-big exhausts and taillights. The small, ‘Alfa’-style nose and grill caught my heart, as well as the semi-circle steering wheel. I might be the only person ever to fall for a car and have the steering wheel be a reason why.
I am entirely aware that there may be better choices of car for the price you are paying with an Alfa 4C. There may be prettier cars out there as well, but that’s entirely subjective (although I will not let anyone tell me a Hummer H3 is a pretty car. It just isn’t.). As I drove home in a foggy, Alfa-filled daze I realized why I fell so hard for the 4C. And it starts with what you can’t see on the outside.
My favorite cars I have ever driven are the ones that allow me to be apart of the car. Maybe I’m just young and my back hasn’t given out and I don’t have wonky knees, but what I love about cars like Miatas (bias warning) is how much you can feel while you are driving them. You can feel the car’s momentum over hills, the steering is such that you know exactly where the tires are pointing, the engine is small enough to be pushed on public roads. Normally, this translates into uncomfortable cruising when you are not driving like Steve McQueen; my car is too loud on the road, not too comfy over long stretches, and can only seat one other (medium-sized) human being. But to me, that’s what sells a car to my heart. When car makers strip out everything to focus on the pure exhilaration of driving, that’s what raises my eyebrows. And it seems like that’s what Alfa has done with the 4C.
When they were building the 4C, Alfa’s attention to saving weight was a little bit…extreme. Most of the car is carbon fiber which is very light and very strong. There is no unnecessary weight and Alfa wants it to stay that way - the front hood doesn’t open. Normally, rear-engine cars like Porsches use the front as the trunk. Not in the Alfa. It’s like someone took Terry Crews and squished him down into a car; there’s just no extra fat anywhere. Terry Crews likely produces more power than the 4C (I don’t believe this is factually supported) which introduces the next reason why I love this car. It looks like an Italian supercar, built to slaughter tracks like Spa or the Nürburgring. But, open the rear hatch and you have to squint to see the teeny-weeny 1.7 liter 4-cylinder turbocharged engine. Alfa has managed to squeeze 237 horsepower out of the little gem, which will also get you up to the mid-30s in miles per gallon. Alfa’s dedication to weight didn’t stop there. They removed power steering completely which, like Jalopnik’s Patrick George, I am thrilled about.
If there was ever a modern sports car made specifically for driver experience, the Alfa Romeo 4C is it. It’s lightness, barking 4-pot, carbon-fiber body and lack of power steering may produce some question marks to V-8 enthusiasts, but it is perfect for folks like me. As oil prices continue to climb and cylinders are swapped for turbochargers (BMW M-series are a great example) I hope to see more cars with this same formula. Light weight, lighter on the power, heavy on the smiles. Order up!
