Alfa Romeo’s 4C Spider is the junior supercar Ferrari hasn’t built

Alfa Romeo's 4C Spider is a car of won'ts and nots. Aside from the fully carbon-fiber tub—like a million-dollar LaFerrari—you won't find much high-tech zootery (or is that high-zoot tech-ery?). You won't find autonomous lane-keeping, radar-fed cruise control, crash-avoidance software, or inductive charging mats. It does not have luggage space where a normal suitcase will fit. Power steering or power retractable roof? Not so much. You’d even be challenged to find basic cruise control at all, unless you look hard, because it's hidden pretty well. But, you won't care.

You will find a laser-focused sports car, nimbleness, and a big dose of driving magic it otherwise takes Ferrari money to obtain. Yes, this is the $64,000 "baby Ferrari" question that nearly no one asked for ($76,495 with options as tested). It's as simultaneously brilliant and flawed as actual Ferraris of 10 or 15 years ago. In that sense, a "best of times / worst of times" sports car. Dickensian.

Throw the lightweight little Alfa (2,487 lbs/1,128 kg) around a track or your own favorite set of switchbacks, and you quickly discover why this car is here on Earth. The Alfa snicks and sticks everywhere, making you a driving champion mentally. This is a Michael Schumacher maker for your mind.

But this isn't a love letter, and the car has failed with more than a few  enthusiasts. Take my friend Marc. He's an Alfa Romeo expert who's owned dozens. After hopping into the 4C, he immediately dismisses the car.

"Where is the gear lever?" he barks. "Not another car with those damned paddles, is it? This is an Alfa, ferchrissakes. It needs a manual with a proper clutch. I don't care how good it is. It's totally off my list without a manual. This is just… just … wrong." Talked down from his ledge, Marc did enjoy the dynamics, handling, braking, looks, and sheer brio of the 4C.

If you trace the 4C's parentage, you find the achingly beautiful Type 33 Stradale, only 18 of which were built between 1967 and 1969. Both Type 33 and 4C are mid-engine designs. But in most respects, the 4C takes up the baton left not by an old Alfa Romeo, but the Ferrari 246 Dino ('69-'74). Both are small, use relatively small engines (the Dino a 2.4-liter V6 also used in the contemporary Fiat Dino), and offer open and enclosed versions.

However, the closest modern car to the 4C in recent memory is the featherweight Lotus Elise. The 4C brings a level of driving intensity and vivacity you rarely find outside the Ferrari world, but does so with a solid injection of Lotus' core value—light weight.

That LaFerrari-like construction helps. A carbon-fiber tub makes up the car's foundation. Front and rear subframes bolt to it, carrying suspension and mid-mounted drivetrain. The tub weighs just 236 pounds (107kg); and much of the interior is bare weave, a constant reminder All that composite-flash costs time though. Each 4C takes six weeks from tub to finished car at the (Maserati-owned) factory in Modena, Italy.

The 4C's body uses sheet-molded composite (SMC), the same material used on Chevy's Corvette. It's about 20 percent lighter than steel. The transformation from Coupe to Spider includes a strengthened carbon windshield frame, redesigned aluminum roll bar, and bracing in the body and engine compartment to maintain as much torsional rigidity as possible. The removable cloth top (more or less) rolls up to take up most of the 3.7 cubic feet (104.7L) of hot trunk space.

The suspension architecture uses double A-arms with an anti-roll bar in front and MacPherson struts with an anti-roll bar in the rear. And with the optional ($2,200) Track Package, our test 4C has higher-performance (more tightly valved) shock absorbers with larger anti-roll bars and Pirelli P-Zero "AR Racing" tires (205/40 fronts, 235/35 rears) on staggered 18x7-inch front and 19x8.5-inch rear wheels. Great for trackdays, but it's not all sunshine and lollipops.

The 4C tramlines in real-world road conditions like a police bloodhound following a scent, especially on top of ruts and irregularities. Of particular failure, the center 10 degrees or so of steering lock is completely dead (five degrees in either direction from perfect center). Break through that threshold with more steering input and it improves, but for the unaware it can cause serious problems quickly. I even checked the front suspension of our tester for loose fittings and came up empty. I then checked it for toe-out and came up empty. The hunting trait is baked into this puppy from the factory.

However, when the going is mostly smooth, the very sticky P-Zeros make the chassis almost imperturbable. Inducing real oversteer on the street requires epic levels of stupidity. There's also a four-mode stability control program with settings for Natural, All-Weather, Dynamic, and Race modes (the latter disabling all stability control but leaving anti-lock brakes active).

The 4C's 1.7L four-cylinder engine might seem like an off-the-shelf commodity from corporate parent Fiat, but it's far from normal. Both block and head are aluminum, pared of any excess weight (the assembly is just 299lbs/136kg). It's fed by direct fuel injection, spraying multi-pintle (or multi-orifice) injectors at 2,900psi (200bar). Maximum turbo boost is 21.75psi (1.45bar), helping produce an official 237hp (177kW) and 258lb-ft of torque (350Nm).

With just under 2,500lbs to lug around, it's athletic and it speaks to you through every channel: through the exhaust, the steering wheel rim, your fingertips, the pedals, through the wind and bugs in your hair, through your butt, and through your kidneys over bumps. In fact, it speaks so much you can't ever shut it up. Despite looking fervently, I found no evidence of sound deadening or absorption, confirming the Alfa's intense mission.

In the less-is-more department, a $500 "Racing" exhaust system option slices the muffler out entirely, leaving all mufflage to the four catalysts and the turbocharger itself. This is one loud and unsubtle puppy.

Listen carefully on a lifted throttle after building boost. Past the booming and sizzling exhaust, you can hear the wastegate blowing off, whistling and chuffing like a real IMSA GTP car of the '90s. Call us juvenile, but it sounds stupendous.

For the record, this is a very healthy 237 horsepower engine. So healthy that I dug in a bit with some quick math, using an old but very reliable drag-racing calculation for engine performance based on speed through the end of the quarter-mile. (Engine hp = test weight X (107/234)³). With a reliable quarter-mile trap speed (107 mph) and weight with a driver (2,647 lbs / 1,201 kg), the calculation suggests 253hp, well past any normal production tolerances. Healthy and happy.

Merely starting up the Alfa and pulling out of a parking lot puts you on the starting grid at Sebring. The twin-clutch "TCT" transmission engages its clutches roughly. It allows you to roll backwards since the clutches only bite when you apply throttle. If you upshift at anything above about 2,000 rpm, the exhaust flatulence on a closed throttle astounds as the engine settles down several hundred rpm. On the other end of the spectrum, in full launch control & race mode, the 4C takes off with a wallop and upshifts snap by in 130 milliseconds. 60mph (97km/h) arrives in 4.2 seconds and the quarter-mile passes in 12.9 seconds. Seriously quick.

Though power and acceleration always get the big headlines, a car's engine isn't nearly the most important component or system—the brakes are. The 4C's brakes are stellar—starting first and foremost with the pedal's firmness and linearity. Alfa spent a great deal of time getting this right, and it shows. It feels like a race car's pedal where there's no sense of power assist. While you must calibrate yourself for this, it quickly becomes instinct. The car is so light and the brakes so effective, it's clearly an advantage.

In fact, it does have a brake, but one that provides a minimal amount of assist. The master cylinder and brake lines have a higher capacity than most cars and certainly most cars of this size and weight, which moves the volume of fluid quicker and over a wider spread across the pads. It also imparts greater sensitivity with improved ability to modulate the pedal.

As for the pedal itself, it's a substantial item, mounted to the floor at a point of very high structural strength compared to most hanging pedals. The pedal's angle also increases the pressure you can shove into it.

The front calipers themselves are critical. Four pistons directly oppose each other rather than two on one side of the rotor pressing against a fixed clamp on the other side. The caliper housing is a single piece, a boon to stiffness. The calipers clamp 12-inch (305mm) diameter vented front rotors and 11-inch (279.4mm) vented rear rotors.

The 4C requires sacrifices from its occupants. If you don't have at least some gasoline flowing in your veins, you won't be happy and you won't see the happiness that the Alfa portrays. But if you have even a tinge of the car disease, you'll be so entertained you never realize it has no arm rests. You don’t care that the instrument cluster and gauges are hard to read. You forgive the full assault on the ears.

And you look for more excuses to go out and drive.

Listing image by Jim Resnick