So, Jason Cammisa approves of the 4c. Heartily. He drove the meanest, most stripped Italian-spec car you can get. It seems quite excellent. Jay says:
Approaching in the oncoming lane, the mid-engined Alfa Romeo 4C looks every bit as exotic as a Ferrari. It has, after all, about the same width-to-height proportions as a 458 Italia. It is impossibly wide, incredulously low, and breathtakingly beautiful.
And then it flies past with triple-digit decibels of anger exploding from its tailpipes, punctuated by the whip-crack misfire induced as its computers orchestrate a 130-millisecond gearchange. The noise is pure Ferrari, in loudness, fury, intensity, and timbre.
No surprise, since the Alfa Romeo 4C has no muffler.
No muffler at all. No resonator, nothing: a turbo, a catalytic converter, and that’s it. In its basic form—which, according to the company, tips the scales at a filled-with-helium 2028-lb curb weight—it also has no radio, no air conditioning, no power steering, no side or knee airbags, no carpeting to speak of, a miniscule 10.6-gallon fuel tank, and no ability to adjust the passenger seat in any way whatsoever.
On the other hand, it has the world’s most violent-sounding four-cylinder: a 1742-cc all-aluminum, direct-injected, turbocharged angry little creature that makes six liters of V-12 worth of noise. It trades power-sapping balance shafts for a short stroke and eight crankshaft counterweights and is force-fed 21.75 psi of boost to bark out 237 hp and 258 lb-ft of torque.
He has a LOT more to say. Read the whole thing.
The Alfa 4C is like a Transformer: It turns into a Ferrari