Dear R&T,
I have the utmost respect for Alfa Romeo
and its heritage. I’m trying to like the new 4C, I really am. But that thing is
butt-ugly! And based on your driving experience in the June issue, it’s not
fully baked. You compared it to the Lotus Elise, and I suspect it’ll have the
same market penetration as that brilliantly flawed beast. I can only hope that
Fiat Chrysler will bring over more mainstream Alfas to keep the 4C company, and
that those cars won’t be orphaned after a few years. But history tends to
repeat itself.
The automotive media is generally excited
about the 4C and is raving over its looks. I’m not sure why. Mid-engine,
rear-drive cars are always welcome, and the Alfa is attractive. But its looks
are derivative. By which I mean that a Beverly Hills Lotus Exige found itself
in Fresno with nothing better to do, so it hooked up with a Pontiac Solstice
coupe. The love child got the layout and potential performance of the Exige,
with an interior and build quality that only Pontiac could inspire. It’s cool
that this car exists as an exercise and that it may lead to even better stuff
in the future. But Fiat seems to have spent a little too much of its time on
looks and makeup and not enough on fitness.
By
which I mean that a Beverly Hills Lotus Exige found itself in Fresno with
nothing better to do, so it hooked up with a Pontiac Solstice coupe.
Mike Hui.burt, Harpers Ferry, West
Virginia
Re: your last point—you are aware that the
car in question is Italian, yes?
The 4C is the best that Alfa can do?
Where’s the progress and innovation? A carbon-fiber chassis that’s about the
same weight as the aluminum chassis of the Elise? A curb weight higher than
that of the Elise (and the U.S. version will be even heavier to meet our crash
standards)? A paddle-shifted automatic instead of a proper manual gearbox? All
I see in the 4C is what should have been the updated Elise, only Lotus would
have done it better.
All
I see in the 4C is what should have been the updated Elise, only Lotus would
have done it better.
David Zimlin, Dunedin, Florida
So the Alfa brand is back in America, and
the consensus seems to be that it needs the 4C to be a success. On everything
else, people seem split. The car is beautiful, or perhaps it’s an insect-eyed
frog. It’s a technically impressive exercise, or maybe it’s a failed execution
of a Lotus concept. It’s delightfully minimal, or infuriatingly spartan. It’s a
failed attempt at a Boxster-beater, unless, of course, it offers a unique
alternative to a Cayman. After hearing all these arguments, I frankly had no
idea what the 4C was. Then it hit me—possibly brilliant, definitely
impractical, perhaps unreliable, culturally divisive, a lovely failure. If
nothing else, it’s every bit an Alfa. It’s like they never left.
And the R&T mini compare, Jason Cammisa
writes on the BMW 320i, “Pull the badge, no one will know you bought the
poverty pack.” Maybe Jason and the soccer moms (do they even check badge
deletes?) won’t know, but unless the car’s exhaust is rerouted, any BMW
aficionado and most R&T readers will easily be able to distinguish the
single-pipe 320i from the dual-cluster 328i, the separate-exhaust 335i, and the
quad-pipe M3. They make the badges superfluous. I’m sure BMW planned it that
way.
And
the R&T mini compare, Jason Cammisa writes on the BMW 320i, “Pull the
badge, no one will know you bought the poverty pack.”
GregoryK. Bergey, Baltimore, Maryland
