Alfa Romeo couldn’t have wished for a better start to 2014: the readers of the specialist magazine ‘Auto, Motor und Sport’ choose the Alfa Romeo 4C to receive the title of ‘Best Cars 2014’ in the Importers ranking – ‘sports cars’ category – ahead of 28 models from the pantheon of super sports cars, which generally cost a good deal more than the captivating mid-engined Italian coupé with carbon fibre chassis and rear-wheel drive.
Louis-Carl Vignon, Head of Alfa Romeo EMEA and in attendance at the award ceremony in Stuttgart (Germany) received the trophy.
In voting for the ‘Best Cars 2014’, more than 115,000 readers chose the Alfa Romeo 4C as the most exciting import sports car of the year. Designed by Alfa Romeo’s engineers and produced at the Maserati plant in Modena, the compact supercar represents the essential sportiness embedded in the ‘Alfa Romeo DNA’: performance and technical excellence for maximum driving pleasure combined with a breathtaking style.
The Alfa Romeo 4C is a genuine, uncompromising ‘driving machine’ that’s at its best precisely on the track, where speed, short braking distances and transverse acceleration are essential for first-rate lap times: from 0 to 100 km/h in 4.5 seconds flat, top speed of 258 km/h, deceleration peaks in the range of 1.2 g and lateral acceleration peaks over 1.1 g. All this is achieved through optimal weight distribution – 40% on the front axle and 60% on the rear – and a total dry weight of just 895 kg – for the most part made up of carbon fibre, aluminium, steel and SMC – in addition to an extraordinary weight to power ratio of less than 4 kg/HP.
The first-rate performance is also due to the combination of the new 240 HP 1750 Turbo Petrol engine with the latest-generation ‘Alfa TCT’ dry twin clutch transmission and the advanced Alfa DNA selector with the brand-new Race mode. More specifically, the new ‘4 cylinder’ 1750 Turbo Petrol with direct injection at 200 bar and aluminium block achieves amazing performance. Torque and specific power set new records for this category, at over 200 Nm/l and 137 HP/l respectively, while maximum power of 240 HP (176 kW) is reached at 6,000 rpm.
What’s more, two other Alfa Romeo models have come out in top spots in the annual ranking from ‘Auto, Motor und Sport’ dedicated to import cars: the Alfa Romeo MiTo came second in the ‘hatchback’ category, while the Alfa Romeo Giulietta took third place among the ‘compacts’. Both cars have undergone recent updates.
