Alfa Romeo 8C Spider
- Brand: Alfa Romeo
- Body Type: Convertible
Alfa’s taken roof off its utterly gorgeous 8C. All the better to hear its 450bhp Ferrari V8.
Light rain is falling on the tarmac of the Balocco test track, mid-way between Milan and Turin. Grey early-morning skies hang over the rather featureless Piedmontese topography. It’s not the most promising of starts. But this is a story of contrasts, and our day is about to be made immeasurably brighter as we’re directed to a block of unusually attractive garages on the outskirts of the complex. A small man in smart Alfa Romeo overalls opens the door of one of them to reveal what is almost certainly, on a rainy November Monday morning in 2009, the most beautiful car in the world.
As we take a few moments to drink it in, chief engineer Domenico Bagnasco describes what it took to turn the already impossibly gorgeous Alfa 8C coupe into the arguably even more stunning Spider while, at the same time, improving the poor ride and rather tail-snappy handling.
It took a lot, apparently, including extensive lateral and longitudinal cross-bracing, recalibration of springs and dampers, the adoption of carbon-ceramic brakes reducing unsprung weight, though overall the Spider is 90kg heavier and a general fine-tuning of the extra masses to achieve a perfect 50:50 weight distribution. Oh yes, and the addition of a motorised, Z-frame fabric hood with manual header-rail latching another 3kg saved.
