[Red Bread]

Originally Posted by GoingTooFast

Launch Edition:




Whether the launch edition is worth $20k plus or not is up to each one to decide... I thought you were worried about the fact that you could not put a deposit down on a 4C for $55-$60k instead.

Oooops... there's the problem with the two pedals only, back to circular logic... maybe the BRZ and the Cayman have a chance then?!

What's the challenge with putting a deposit down? I don't mind the idea, but since Subaru and Scion dealers are still trying to get over MSRP for the BRZ/FRS, I would imagine that it will be a little while until the Alfa is available for MSRP or less. I don't need to be first in line, and I imagine the Launch Edition cars, just by merit of their name alone, will be the first cars sold.

I love the new Cayman design, I enjoy the old one too. A Cayman feels more sorted than the BRZ, but of course it should for the price. The BRZ is certainly a good value and if we ever see an STI, it could be a serious consideration against the Cayman and 4C for me.

There's no doubt that I personally struggle with the lack of an available manual in the 4C, but this would be a weekend car for me, and my daily is a manual, so I could probably learn to deal with it.

[GoingTooFast]

Ten years from now and you'll be still driving your wife's car... a BMW of course!

[GoingTooFast]

BTW, to show you how little you want to understand about cars there's no dyno run whatsoever. This is a SUSPENSION test:

Originally Posted by Red Bread

Did you just stumble on the above pic of what appears to be a non Launch Edition on a dyno, or do you actually know something about it?

[F1Venom]

This looks like a $55k car at the maximum limit.

[GoingTooFast]

Originally Posted by F1Venom

This looks like a $55k car at the maximum limit.

$55-$60k for a car that is practically hand built, that you can live with on a daily basis and that does 4.5 sec from 0-62 mph while being much more fuel-efficient than a Toyobaru in NO way can be consider expensive when a significantly slower, less fuel-efficient base Cayman sells for $ 52,600.00... :

[GoingTooFast]

[thebishman]

I have no idea how reliable the car will be but it is undeniably gorgeous and will sell like hotcakes. I just hope AR can make enough of them for the market and that it drives as well as it looks.
Bish

[GoingTooFast]

Originally Posted by thebishman

I just hope AR can make enough of them for the market and that it drives as well as it looks.

With such low weight, high torsional rigidity and non assisted steering whatsoever in virtue of the car's lightweight I'm sure it will drive fantastically. And, that's what intrigues me the most: why car journalist/reviewers don't give the necessary importance to an absolute KEY feature like the car weight?!

Take Chris Harris for instance. We all like his videos but his reviews about the GT3 (and Porsches in general) are getting so old that it makes me feel sad for an otherwise so popular car reviewer. In fact, if you compare his most recent review about the 991 GT3 which now weighs 1505 kg EU Weight (= Weight of Car with 90% fuel, 68 kg driver, 7 kg cargo = DIN weight + 75 kg = 1430 kg + 75 kg) - just for reference the 1M weighs 1570 kg - to his 2009 review of the lighter 997 GT3 gen2 you can hear the same kind of observations and the same kind of only now to justify the fact that a car that has become heavier by adopting all sort of gizmos in order to cope with the increased horsepower has also robbed the driver of his involvement in the process of driving, much like the way the 'heavy pig' Nissan GTR does with all its 'cleaver stuff'.


Chris Harris on the 997 GT3 gen2:

The big difference for me have spending the day driving it is this: I think the front end of the car is much better tied down now. That sounds like a real hostile observation but the old car did understeer a bit, it real get through understeer. This doesn't. (...) It's very cleaver stuff! It gives you even more confidence, this car is about confidence! You just feel you can put it so accurately in the road which is a good thing because the old GT3 is a much bigger car now, phisically, than the old RS is used to be.

Chris Harris on the 991 GT3:

[Dalecan]

I love the way this little car looks. Alfa'a do have a it of a reputation for being unreliable, however the 156 that I owned was a fantastic car. Nothing went wrong with it in the 3 years that I owned it. Also, it had one of the nicest interiors that I've been in. It was one of the few cars that I've sold that hasn't made a loss.

I look forward to test driving one of these when the arrive, but the price will be interesting!

She is pretty though.

[GoingTooFast]

It looks and sounds wonderful...

[DASHOCKER]

Looks likes fatter lotus elise

[GoingTooFast]

Originally Posted by DASHOEUCKER

Looks likes fatter lotus elise

At ~1020 kg EU Weight (DIN Weight of Car, not the dry weight, with 90% fuel, 68 kg driver, 7 kg cargo) maybe so but the Alfa 4C represents the absolute maximum acceptable compromise for one to use it on a daily basis. I couldn't live with an Evora - I tried it, get in and out of a Lotus is ridiculous - let alone an Elise.

Moreover, the Alfa 4C is more fuel-efficient than the Lotus.

[BMW269]

Originally Posted by DASHOCKER

Looks likes fatter lotus elise

Shows that you know nothing about Alfa.

[GoingTooFast]

Levi,

The Alfa 4C is indeed heavier than the lightest Elise... thus you can say it 'looks fatter' in that regard.

I saw it live today for the first time... DEAD DROP GORGEOUS!!!

Also, the interior is very neat and the plastics although hard they have a very nice touch to it. You get an italian sportive quality kind of feeling highlighted by visible carbon fiber all over the place. The quality and the quality feeling is MILES, MILES away better than a Lotus (which is not that difficult ), trust me!

On the other hand, the Cayman interiors look like 'a living room' in comparison. I love every single aspect of the Alfa 4C, so cuore sportivo.

[GoingTooFast]

...

Alfa Romeo 4C: tech rundown and video

Video and additional details of the new Alfa Romeo 4C sports car, which tackles the Porsche Cayman and Lotus Evora


By Harry Metcalfe13th June 2013

It's two years since Alfa Romeo unveiled its 4C concept car, announcing that it fully intended to put it into production. After a string of disappointments, most car enthusiasts had given up on Alfa ever getting its sporting mojo back, but with the unveiling of this incredibly pretty mid-engined coupe, there was suddenly hope again.

Fast forward two years Alfa has unveiled the production 4C. The firm seems to have kept to its word, because the 4C that will go on sale looks just as desirable as the concept. Well, almost. Somewhere along the way it lost the lovely 8C-like covered headlights of the concept and gained some cheap-looking sparkly units instead.

‘The number one goal with this project was to make the 4C as light as possible. This new design is much lighter than that on the concept, where the headlights were like those on the 8C. With no outside cover and no extra components underneath, the new ones are both lighter and cheaper to make. They still give the 4C its unique face, and those multiple running lights look menacing, like the lights on a jet fighter’, says Fiat’s global head of design, Lorenzo Ramaciotti.

‘We have in fact changed every inch of the car, but because the concept was very realistic in the first place, we didn’t have to modify the whole car, only surface details. The body panels are constructed from high-density plastic, which is a very good material when you are looking at a car with a planned production rate of only 3500 units a year. The plastic can be tuned so that it features different thicknesses and strengths wherever necessary. The only metal structures on the 4C are the front and rear aluminium crash frames and the doors, which have metal frames inside them for crash strength and for the hinges to be fixed to.’

Another surprise is that the front ‘bonnet’ is fixed. It looks like it opens conventionally, but it can only be removed by getting your spanners out. It comes down to Alfa simplifying it to reduce weight, and a fixed panel means no hinges or opening mechanism are required (topping up the screenwash is done via a removable panel between the bonnet and windscreen).**

The Alfa 4C’s technology centres around a carbonfibre tub, which not only adds lightness (it weighs a mere 52kg) but also a sense of premium. That’s reinforced when you open a door and reveal the bare gloss carbon-weave finish on the sills, just as you’d find on a Pagani Zonda. It looks stunning, with the super-size weave continuing on the floor (fixed mats protect the carbon under your feet), part-way up the centre tunnel, inside the door jams and halfway up the rear bulkhead behind the seats.


‘We believe the 4C has no direct competitors at this price point,’ says of Louis-Carl Vignon, who oversees Alfa in the Europe, Middle East and Africa regions. ‘Before the 4C, if you wanted a sports car with a carbon chassis you had to buy a McLaren or Ferrari supercar, so the 4C introduces race technology to a new market. Compared to cars like the Lotus Elise, the 4C is much more useable but still very extreme. It is a pure driving experience: there is no power steering because that is the best solution for driving pleasure. The speed of gearchange is very quick too and we have put the paddles on the steering wheel, so you never have to take your hand off the wheel.’ Those paddles control a twin-clutch gearbox mated to the 237bhp 1.7-litre turbocharged in-line four-cylinder that’s mounted transversely behind the cabin.

Getting into the 4C is a squeeze, but easier than clambering into an Elise thanks to the larger door and bigger opening. The seats aren’t as ‘sporty’ as I was expecting and the conventional rotary heater controls look a bit cheap for a £52,000 car. But the tiny steering wheel feels great and I really like the single central LCD dash display, which changes as you switch between the four ‘DNA’ driving modes (see panel, p108). But it’s obvious a lot of the money has been swallowed up by that carbon chassis and the result is an impressive (dry) weight for a Euro-spec 4C of 895kg. For reference, the smaller Lotus Elise S (378cm long versus 399cm for the 4C) weighs in at 924kg with fluids, but has 20bhp less and isn’t nearly as well-equipped as the Alfa.

Will this be enough for sales to hit Alfa’s ambitious target of 3500 units a year? £52,000 is more than we hoped the 4C would cost. Even if the regular version comes in close to £43k, it still feels like a big chunk of money for what is a fun car rather than an everyday sports coupe. Are people prepared to pay a premium to own a car with a trick carbon tub? We’ll find out in due course, although Vignon isn’t worried: ‘In terms of customers, the 4C is going to sell to car collectors, to lovers of Alfas and most important of all, to lovers of cars.’ Best count us in, then.

[GoingTooFast]

I went to the Alfa 4C presentation yesterday so here are some photos of the event (I'm sorry for the poor quality of some pics but I wasn't the photographer ):

[KingOfJericho]

I hope that's not a production car with that dryer vent tubing in the engine bay.

[GoingTooFast]

Originally Posted by KingOfJericho

I hope that's not a production car with that dryer vent tubing in the engine bay.

This is a race car man... a race car, you know?!

[KingOfJericho]

No, it's not. It just looks sloppy.

[Red Bread]

Thanks for the pics, interesting to see that they still don't appear production ready, but it's certainly looking promising.

[GoingTooFast]

A race car :









BTW, I don't know how the final production version of the Alfa 4C will look like in that regard... but I couldn't care less. This is a race car after all...

Originally Posted by KingOfJericho

No, it's not. It just looks sloppy.

[thebishman]

Originally Posted by KingOfJericho

I hope that's not a production car with that dryer vent tubing in the engine bay.

I think it's heat shielding.
Bish