Alfa Romeo 4C Spider opens for business in Detroit

Alfa Romeo has presented the full-production 4C Spider at the Detroit Motor Show this week. The car is due on sale in time for summer with a price tag around the £52,000 mark.

The convertible version of the spicy Italian two-seater was first shown at the Geneva show in 2012, but in concept form only. Since then, Auto Express has spied Alfa engineers testing convertible mules, and now the firm is ready to reveal all.

Alfa 4C fans will be excited to hear that the Italian car maker hasn’t played around with the recipe too much. Naturally, the big news concerns the roof, which is made entirely out of fabric, and to keep the weight down, there is no electric mechanism. To remove the roof, owners will have to manually pop it and stow it away while an exposed carbonfibre hardtop will be available as an option. Other weight-saving measures include the fitment of 10 per cent thinner windscreen and side window glass. It all means the Spider carries a 10kg weight penalty over the Coupe version.

Other changes include the removal of the Coupe’s much-criticised and fussy headlamp clusters and replaced by simpler single-piece units, and as shown on Geneva’s Spider Concept, a centrally-mounted Akrapovic sports exhaust system. Now there’s no roof, the engine is now enclosed with a twin-hump cover, elevating the body above the belt-line.

With the Spider’s launch, Alfa has also chosen to introduce a raft of upgrades to the interior. An Alpine radio can now be selected giving Bluetooth streaming and HD radio, and there are six interior options and new leather combinations.

On the outside there’s the choice of seven colours including a vibrant yellow paint option, as pictured, four new wheel designs and four brake caliper options. As before, customers can choose between 17-inch (front) and 18-inch (rear) alloys or 18-inch (front) and 19-inch (rear) wheels.

That’s where the changes stop as the mid-mounted 1.75-litre four-cylinder engine still develops 237bhp with 0-62mph taking around 4.5 seconds and a top speed of 160mph. It arrives in the summer with a predicted price of around £52,000, £7k more than the Coupe.

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