Buy with your head, drive with your heart: Alfa Romeo 4C Coupe

Seduced by a sexy Italian

Vroom vroom – the engine, in full

With 240bhp and a kerb weight of 895kg (dry, but even with fluids and a Vulture it’ll be under a tonne) it will monster 0-62mph in 4.5 seconds. It does that magic supercar thing of propelling you as though some supernatural hand had grabbed the horizon and was pulling it towards you. The 350Nm of torque is instrumental in this. Top speed is supposedly 160mph.

Rumour has it that the new Giulia will be a V6. This would be a good home for that engine

It stops well thanks to the front dual-cast, perforated, ventilated, 305x28 brake discs, with 4-piston Brembo callipers and rear perforated, ventilated 292x22 discs.

A light car with a smallish engine ought to be good for fuel economy and on paper the 4C is:

• Urban cycle 28.8 MPG (9.8 l/100km)
• Extra-urban cycle 56.5 MPG (5.0 l/100km)
• Combined cycle 41.5 MPG (6.8 l/100km)

Even CO2 emissions are good, at 157g/km.

In practice over the 500 miles in our test we saw an average of 26mpg, though much of that is down to idling in London traffic rather than seat-of-the-pants enjoying the thing. Of course, you don’t buy a pocket Ferrari to go hypermiling but the downside of 26 MPG is range. It translates to not much more than 200 miles a tank and that’s below comfortable.

Carbon mirrors a £700 option

The Alfa Romeo 4C Coupe 2016 1750cc TBI Alfa TCT costs £51,500. the review car had a number of options:

• Tri-coat Competizione Red Paint (£2,250)
• Racing double exhaust tailpipe (£500)
• Sports leather seats (£1,400)
• Painted brake callipers (£350)
• Carbon fibre instrument panel (£350)
• Carbon fibre mirror covers (£700)
• Carbon fibre rear spoiler (£1,258)

These – totalling £6,808 – all bring the car as tested to £58,308. Of all those options the only one we’d go for is the two grand of red paint – but bear in mind the car sorely needs a better radio and probably speakers.

For all the numbers and descriptions, the views and counter-views on how it handles, there is one area of uniform agreement: it looks gorgeous. It has that magic quality that makes you smile whenever you walk to it or away from it, a quality that makes you twitch the curtains to see it parked outside. It has a beauty which is impossible to translate into photographs.

I saw one parked in a showroom next to a LaFerrari and the Alfa held its own, but on a suburban London street it is as though the road has been graced with royalty. We often returned to it to find people taking photographs. Drive through London in a 991 turbo and no-one will notice. Cyclists will smile and raise thumbs at a 4C. ®

We are deeply grateful to Paul at Brooklands for allowing us to use the hallowed banking for photography. You'll find more, bigger and less compressed pictures at http://www.guyswarbrick.com/automotive