[Turbowned]

Originally Posted by Yoshoobaroo

The Miata is 133 lbs lighter.
The 220hp Elise is 410 lbs lighter.
Neither of them need a carbon tub to get lower than the 4C, both cheaper (the Elise albeit barely) too.

The 4C is an excersise in superatives for the sake of spec sheet bragging. Which is fine seeing the target market Fiat was going for with the car, but the whole isn't more than the sum of its parts, and as an engineer I cannot like it because of the sheer inadequacy of it's design optimization. At its size, cost, and level of spartan-ness it should beat the Elise handily. Instead a small English company shows all the might of the fiat group what they can build for 58grand is significantly faster than the Italians can do for 63k. Hell even the 190 HP Elise gets damn close and is 15 grand cheaper than the Alfa. Yes the Alfa is fast and it's like an assault on your senses on the track, but so is everything else with close to those power/weight and grip/weight ratios.


The 4C sounds amazing on paper, but once you dig deeper you realize that's all it was meant to do. It's let down by more weight than it should be carrying, a crap gearbox, and an engine that's not very well suited for a sports car. FCA has shown plenty of times that since Ferrari left they kinda phone in the engineering. Like how they bragged they desiged the Giulia in 2.5 years. That's not a good thing. That means you rushed it and you'll pay for that later when it proves to be unreliable. Oh wait. That's exactly what happened.

I did not realize they cut that much weight from the ND MX-5 vs the NC. I stand corrected. I wish they didn't wait til after I bought my BRZ to add 30hp, or I might well be driving an MX-5 by now. Too late!

The Elise hasn't been on sale in the US since 2011, and *if* you can find an S or S 240 they are likely to cost more than a used 4C (no doubt a testament to their desirability, but still out of my budget). I drove the standard Elise and at the time it didn't feel monumentally faster than my 170hp 20v 4AG-swapped MR2. The 2ZZ is such a peaky engine; I didn't really enjoy it (tried a Matrix XR-S with the same engine, same result), though I'm sure it would be adequate at the track if you stay in the powerband. I also really don't fit in an Elise. My line of sight is pretty much parallel with the top of the windshield. So there's that.