Gadgetory

this is how alpha is setting the table for its us come back with a minute super guard his dead manual a convenience there you almost never find that thing let's drive the Alfa 4c check the tail ok anatomy of a supercar at in the middle is a carbon fibre tub that's where you sit on either end our aluminium subframes that's what connects you to the rest of the car behind you is the engine behind that you're gonna find it very small and the only trunk it's warm place you wouldn't take a lemon meringue pie to the track back there you got to put that on the passenger's seat the front looks like a trunk it's not there's just apparatus in there it only comes off with tools two people know plus two now while the 4c is little its body still is not getting across that thing is like taking a trip cross-country well once you're in it's snug but not tight you've got an LCD and rather compact instrument panel up there it's kind of godly rendered but it gets the information across the head unit is an afterthought in fact it's aftermarket that's a parent Astro and Antoine reviewed one of those years ago got a little bit of app support but it's kind of a weird little outlier obviously not the point of the car the drive controls are you've got asymmetrical paddles downshift left up shift is on the right here is your transmission drive control for your dual clutch automated manual one is the same as Drive puts you in first gear there's no park neutral reverse and then your automatic or manual switch over mode unlike many other cars if you grab a shift while you're in automatic it holds for a few seconds in manual mode and drops back to auto this is an interesting control down here you can tell somebody at ofle is in love with the idea of having a control called DNA and what it does is control the cars drive modes its DNA D is gonna be your dynamic month and down one more gets you into what they call natural mode and how do you make a work what is that yeah it's kind of tortured its all-weather mode go up to dynamic though hang on to that guy for like five seconds and there's the Easter Egg you get into race mode now your abs and your stability controller both turned off you better know your car well first huge part of the story on the force sea of course lies back here in the engine bay mid-engine car rear-wheel drive one choice on the transmission it's a six-speed dual-clutch automated manual now the engine itself 1750 CC inline-four servo charged of course it's also got direct injection and multi-port fuel injection the idea is that each of those is better at different parts of the RPM range and driving load range so the car will alternate back and forth or blend them the number 237 horse 258 pound-feet of torque gets this car that weighs about 2,500 pounds up to 60 and around 4.5 seconds now note that if you're one of our European or a rest of the world viewers your 4c weighs a lot less over 350 pounds less because in the u.s. we have a lot of crash standard apparatus especially at the front rear ends and of course we're loaded up with air conditioning under niceties that you can strip out in other markets in a car like this that matters a lot the fuel economy if you care is 24 City 34 highway that's actually really good so you're getting a really fast exotic car that sips gas what's not to love first thing you notice on the 4c which you may be hearing are all these glorious noises you've got the spooling of the turbo you've got the whooshing at the intake you've got the Popoff valve blasting off once in a while as they bleed off excess boost this is the nearest thing to the sound you get in a Veyron that's exactly what it reminds me of the next thing you're aware of is the steering it's high ratio completely unassisted tuck into a corner like this and the precision is amazing there is prodigious power here but unless you keep it on the boil you're very aware of turbo lag it's not like it's not there as either alpha or some other reviewers will tell you but in the car light this is not a big impediment because you're happy to keep it's pooled up keep your foot in it now Alfa Romeo doesn't plan to come back to the u.s. as a value brand but they kind of have this cars a screeching deal for its exotic engineering and extremely wearable handling we're looking at about 55 to face and then there are three things we'd have to go see next time they can be as packages 1800 bucks I'll get your Park Distance sensors the only parking help you can get on this car better speakers an alarm and cruise control Americans like that stuff the track package for 2400 gets you a firmer performance suspension some carbon fiber trim I could live without and a rear spoiler and if the base exhaust isn't rowdy enough for you 500 bucks new to the sport exhaust so your neighbors will fully hate you all in about 60 grand for one of the most distinctive cars that we've ever driven and perhaps one of those responsive ones you ever will more cars driven 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