News that the coupe version of the 4C will be discontinued is not likely to shock you to your core. You may have forgotten it was still technically on sale, something you could be forgiven for given that Alfa's lightweight sports car is about as common as an honest man in parliament. The fall of the axe has been reported in the States, and leaves Fiat's sports car wing without a proper coupe until its much-vaunted new product line-up gets underway.
This is a shame. But not inappropriate, given that phrase was used a lot in connection with the 4C - a car that promised to encapsulate everyone's top ten wishes for a svelte, rear-driven coupe, and then delivered on about three of them. It was good looking and very light and fast, too - but mortally wounded by twitchy steering and a worrying tendency to weave about like a headless chicken along an average stretch of B road.
It was expensive as well; unavoidably so because of the admirable amount of innovation Alfa poured into its development. The use of a carbon tub is (still) generally reserved for supercars and high-end track cars, not mainstream coupes. Thus the Porsche Cayman and the Audi TT made sales mincemeat of Alfa's moonshot. And anyone not interested in either most likely bought a Lotus Elise - the car that the 4C was flagrantly modelled on (even if Turin unsportingly refused to make mention of it).
Nevertheless, the ambition was nothing if not admirable. The 4C was precisely the sort of car Alfa should have been building everyone agreed, and the fact it didn't get it quite right is neither here nor there. Mercifully, then, light does remain at the end of the tunnel; the open-top 4C survives, and is being facelifted as we speak. According to Autocar, the tweak will include upgrades to the suspension and steering, suggesting that we might yet see a version of the sports car that the 4C promised to be.
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