Road Test: Alfa Romeo 4C 1.75 TBi 2dr TCT

The Alfa 4C? That's been out ages...

It has been on sale for a year in the UK now, but this is the first time we've been able to drive one with smaller wheels and the Comfort chassis set-up (no rear anti-roll bar, softer springs and dampers).

Why would you want to do that?

Um, how to put this nicely? Maximally sportified, it wasn't very good. At all. It weaved and dived under braking, tramlined alarmingly, had an overly excitable turbo and odd gearbox calibration, numb brakes with an inconsistent pedal and rode with almost no dexterity at all. I could go on. But I won't. Suffice it to say there's a reason we never took it on our PCOTY test (issue 258).

So this one rectifies all the bad stuff?

No, almost none of it, in fact. Sigh. I take no pleasure in writing this, because I wanted the Alfa 4C to be so good, to really stick it to the Germans, but aside from more forgiveness in the ride, slightly improved traction and a touch less sensitivity to road camber, the basics of the chassis behaviour haven't changed enough. The inch-smaller wheels (17 and 18 respectively) still look cool, too. You don't notice they're smaller because the matt black alloys mean it's hard to tell where wheel ends and tyre begins.

And the 4C is still heart-stoppingly lovely to look at...

Achingly pretty, no doubt about it. The trouble is there's this yawning chasm between how it looks and how it drives, and even in Comfort trim it's not a very trustworthy car, constantly fidgeting and trying to dart off in odd directions. It's too unruly.

But doesn't that just mean it's engaging and fun?

Not when the car is fighting against you rather than with you, no. It still feels as if final development work is yet to occur in pretty much every area, from seat design to damping. But I'd put up with all that if the 4C was rich in character, but it isn't - the turbo engine just whooshes about. It's so effective through the mid-range that there's no reason to hang on to see if the noise gets any better higher up (it doesn't). All told, the 4C still feels like a poorly targeted device.