The madmen. They've gone and done it. We're finally testing an Alfa for the first time in COTW.
I've never really gotten the appeal of Alfas, or understood how they haven't yet gone bankrupt. Their cars supposedly have such "soul" and much "passion", but to the uninitiated, they're just cars that break silly and break often. There's even a saying in the car community to sum this up that goes, "You can't be a true petrolhead until you've owned an Alfa". The gist of the saying is that, by owning a car that was as horrifically and unbelievably prone to breaking as though designed by the Italian cousins of Edward Murphy, you'll experience the most distilled and purest of automotive joy, as your hands will never be clean and you'll always be late for work or stranded. Or just begging for help on Alfa forums. That's the essence of the joys of motoring, isn't it? Such soul! Much passion!
I honestly can't even tell if the saying is a joke, or if it's actually meant to be taken seriously, as a way to romanticise pain and hardship and for Alfa owners to justify to themselves that they've made a good purchase. Or maybe they just want attention. I don't know. And I don't want to know. But alas, either by the blind loyalty of the extremely niche market of rich petrolhead masochists or some black art sorcery support system I'm not privy to, Alfa Romeo is still in business today, and this week, I'm blindfolded, gagged, whipped, and half kicked, half pulled by the leash of my employment contract obligations into the dungeon of despair that is Alfa ownership for a week.
Somehow, I get a feeling that this wasn't the car the masochists have adorning their bottomless pits of pain when they recite their memes with dipsticks embedded in them.
For starters, the car didn't explode when I pressed the engine start button. The wipers work, as do the lights, and the wheels haven't fallen off at the daunting parking lot speeds of 10km/h! Rather than the car, it was the person, i.e. me, that caught a bad case of the Alfanxiety Romeouminate the moment I read that we're testing an Alfa Romeo and broke down this week, missing the meet and hence why this review in isolation. It's contagious, apparently. And its transmissible through text. But hey, employment contractual obligations.
To ensure that I'll have at least ten combined minutes in motion behind the wheel this week to formulate an opinion worthy of your money, the unerring and frighteningly effective mechanics at COTW have made every reassurance that the car will work as intended, making sure every wire is as securely connected and protected as being put into a straitjacket, every body panel is as persistently part of the car as a scar, and the engine will be as incapable of dying as someone who's selfishly told that suicide is selfish and not a solution, no matter how much they want to. But, perhaps due to their obsession with the mechanical and electrical components, something in the interior did manage to break unnoticed: the seats on this particular press car are completely stuck in place like a bad coping habit, because being not quite right is just part of the Alfa DNA, just as depression can be. It's amazing how elevated and refined an art form hiding pain and personal flaws can be.
Sitting in an Alfa to me is akin to walking into a modern art gallery: I don't understand the appeal of any of it. I'm sorry, but if you've to explain to someone what your art means and why it's important, your piece of art has failed to move people as intended. For Alfa Romeo, that last sentence is often more literal than figurative.
The original 4C is a car that, like other Alfas, I didn't really understand. I had an opportunity to quickly test drive the Launch Edition once, and I found it to be way too rear happy under any circumstance and lacking in front end grip, resulting in both under and oversteer, sometimes simultaneously. This was not helped at all by how rough I found the gear changes from the DCT to be. If you're going to make a tiny, lightweight, expensive, problematic, highly compromising, focused sports car, at least make it fun to drive, maybe? Offer a manual, perhaps? I hear the 4C's styling has such "soul" and much "passion", but it's not like the Elise, Cayman, and A110 are particularly awful to look at. Overall, it's an immensely capable car, one that I appreciate for existing as an alternative to the Cayman (I do sometimes try to be unbiased, I swear ;) ), but I'm admittedly not a fan of these rear mid engined short wheelbase cars with souped up econobox engines. With a tune, perhaps it could be something really special, but do you really want to open the aftermarket Pandora's Box with a car that's already so prone to going wrong even when everything is within the manufacturer's scope of normal use?
So, what's changed in this "Gr. 3 Road Car" from the base 4C? Well, a rather handsome body kit which just so happens to generate downforce, for a start. Unsurprising, given that the road car borrows more than heavily from the Gr. 3 race cars that Alfa enters in FIA-GT's Gr. 3 category. What hasn't been carried over however, is the shadow scraping ride height of the racing cars, resulting in a horrifying wheel well gap accommodating enough to hide all your problems and feelings in, comically destroying the svelte proportions and menacing stance of an otherwise serious business looking car, along with any hope of controlling airflow under the body in an act of self sabotage. The turbo with an engine attached to it to was already boosting to within millimetres of it the Inline 4's life in the stock car, but here, boost has been further upped to a gasket shredding, casket teasing 1.5 Bar (21.7psi), to produce 330kW (443HP) and 447.8N⋅m (330.3ft-lb) from the 1742cc package, and specific power ratios that would make a Rotary Engine judge in jealousy.
On the inside, the road car borrows from the racing car a very helpful rear facing camera and a aftermarket looking screen used exclusively for the rear view, jutting out of the dash where the air con vents should've been, because who needs air con in a road car? And if you're thinking of ripping it out, don't. The rear window has been sealed shut by a dark, opaque wall, much like a heart in response to a trauma in the past, meaning that dinky, disruptive, air con robbing screen is your only rear view aside from your side mirrors.
Highly irritating and completely baffling is the gearbox of this Gr. 3 Road Car: it uses an automated manual operated by the stock car's paddles, which were used to shift a rather brisk DCT auto in the stock car. "Oh, you want a manual in a 4C? Here, have a manual in a 4C. What are you upset about now? We gave you exactly what you asked for!" So, counter-intuitively, shifts in the G3RC take several times the duration of the DCT in the stock car, or what an average driver can manage if they were just given three pedals and a stick, while somehow being rougher still when shifted mid corner. I've shifted vans faster and smoother than this gearbox changes gears! As a result of being fitted with a shit gearbox that feels lifted right out of the early 2000s, you have to drive this thing like a manual with auto rev matching to get the best out of it; you have to manually lift off the gas and gently roll back into it mid corner to prevent the rear end from jerking loose, and I'm almost certain manually lifting helps the revs drop faster for a quicker upshift. Trust me when I say that whatever pace advantage you might have being able to left foot brake in this two pedal setup is more than negated by the utterly disgraceful and insufferable shifts of this thing. I know I just whined about how the 4C doesn't have a manual option, but this alternative is so much worse, it's borderline offensive. Feels like an autistic kid trying to change himself to adapt and fit into a world he doesn't understand, and I can't even tell if it's done out of spite or a genuine effort to better themselves.
And it's such a shame, too, because the reworked ratios in this shit gearbox are brilliant and complement this engine so well, being short, peppy, and ensuring you always have revs and torque for every situation. Not that the engine really needs much coddling; one of the highlights of the stock car was its engine, which made peak torque at a near idle 2,000rpm, and pulls all the way to the redline of 7,000, making it a joy to wring on a track and easy to use on the streets. With the increase in boost in the G3RC also came a shifting of the powerband towards the upper range, and redline has been increased to a a therapist worrying 8,500rpm. Peak torque in the G3RC comes in only at 5,500rpm as a result, and the engine still likes to have its naughty little neck wrung, resulting in an engine that has an ample powerband for the track, but becomes a little irritating to work around at pedestrian pace, especially with that farce of a gearbox. The powerband is so linear and predictable in both these cars that it truly felt like an NA at times, and lag was minimal.
The original car's highly irritating handling vices, such as the pushing understeer on turn in and tail happiness everywhere, have been almost medicated and numbed out completely. In fact, aside from the very similar engine noises and largely intact interior, there is absolutely nothing at all from behind the wheel that resembles a 4C. The car has bulked up markedly in dimensions, increasing in length and width by 350.5mm and 81.3mm respectively (13.8in, 3.2in), while being dropped 5.1mm in overall height (0.2in). Wheelbase looks to have been increased as well, though I wasn't given the exact numbers, nor did I bring a ruler for a test drive. To really rein in the tail happy car, tyres have been upsized as well for both the front and rear; might as well, right? Given the flared bodykit?
All this sounds wonderful for performance, but once I got onto the track, I felt somehow more frustrated driving this beefed up G3RC than I did the stock car: the differential was set up astoundingly tight, and when coupled with the chunky rear tyres, understeer was very pronounced, especially on power. I was constantly trying to fight the differential to meet the apex on turn in and stay on the road for corner exit, much to the dismay of the front tyres screaming in agony, and you can tell the completely unassisted steering of the 4C was not meant to wrestle itself like this. Because I was always fighting the differential, the car was very prone to snapping in an instant between chronic understeer and severe acute oversteer, without much warning or leeway in transitioning and modulating between the two. Add to the fact that this car SOMEHOW gained a not-even-funny 370kg (816lbs) over the EDM 4C, and you have a driving experience that is completely unrecogniseable from the stock 4C. I mean, what the hell even? Is it the god awful gearbox? Are the flared fenders made of Osmium? Was the road car BoPped too to be as uncompetitive as its racing car cousins? Or has it been binge eating on comfort food to mourn the end of the 4C's production?
At the end of the day, it's a mid engine sports car. It's not terrible; it's capable in the right hands. It's still light by today's standards at 1,320kg (2,910lbs), and is plenty powerful for its mass. It looks good. But... who is it? What gives it its own flavour? What sets it apart from the oceans of other mid engine sports and supercars? What does it say or do differently than anyone else? Only that it's an Alfa? The problem is made even worse now that it has grown in size — and mass, to be your cookie cutter Cayman with a quarter of its charisma and reliability. I never liked the original 4C much, but this just feels like it has tried too much to change into something it never should've been, either willingly or otherwise, and is worse off for being less distinct and expressive as a result. The only interaction you'll have with it is fighting: fighting the differential on the track, fighting the wheel, and fighting the automated manual at town speeds and at every upshift. And unlike the red Italian rear mid engined 2 door supercar with chronic understeer making around 450PS that has chunky rear tyres, wonky shifts, and a steering wheel I've to wrestle at every turn from last week, there was no epiphany to be found in mastering the 4C G3RC. There is no reward to be had for getting everything just right on the track in this car. You simply coexist with the car in the best of times, and have a messy fight with it at its worst.
And what are you fighting for, anyway? It's never fun. It never made me smile. It doesn't communicate with me. It's just a car with no character. The more it changed, the more it threw away what made it unique and special, and now the only thing that's left of it is a fast car with a stupid gearbox, broken seats, and a lousy diff. And no, being constantly problematic and ill isn't a character trait.
No matter how debilitating an illness is, you can't let it define you as a person. You want to be the guy that likes to write as a hobby because it helped him get through tough times, not the guy who's always brooding and condescending in writing because of his past. You want a car to be an involving, cooperative, communicative, fun to drive, and unique experience, that then tends to require a bit more justifiable attention on and off the track, rather than the car that always breaks down that might be capable if it made it onto a track and didn't then decide to Irish Whip you into a barrier at the slightest push to get to know it better.
Because if being sick consumes you to the point where it becomes your only identifiable trait, who would you be if you were cured? What would you then be known for? If you let it define you so much, do you even want to be cured? Would it be a scary thought to lose your one defining trait? And that's why an illness can never be allowed define someone, no matter how debilitating and all consuming it may be. And that I feel is what has happened to the 4C Gr. 3 Road Car: it thinks that being pretty and constantly broken is all it needs, and it's almost comfortable and used to being the sick kid, expecting you to bend to fit its expectations and be loved regardless rather than come to a compromise for both sides. There was never any communication, and the power in this relationship is too skewed to one end. And I realise you can't force someone to talk to you if they don't want to open up, even if you've every intention to get to know them and help. Or maybe it has so many problems, it doesn't even know where or how to begin conveying it. Well, I guess I'll help it a little. By ripping it a new one.
I never was any good at dealing with crap like this.
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