Tune Makes Alfa 4C Drive Like Stock and Go Like Hell
Stage 2 tune gives lightweight Alfa Romeo 4C Spider 320 horsepower and puts more pep in the step of all eight of its legs.
There are two major ways of increasing a car’s performance. The first technique is reducing weight; the fewer LBs the engine is dragging, the more effective it is. The second is upping the amount of power that engine produces. With a curb weight of 2,487 pounds, the Alfa Romeo 4C Spider in this video from Track Day is already pretty light. That leaves adding horsepower as the most viable option, which the owner did with a tune.
Track Day host Dan Wang is well aware of the 4C Spyder’s baseline performance. According to Wang, “In stock form, the Alfa 4C makes 237 brake horsepower and a healthy 258 ft-lbs of torque from a tiny 1.75-liter boosted inline-four.” Those kinds of numbers make the ragtop Italian a peppy little two-seater. But every car can always be a little faster. Thanks to a tune that puts a total of 320 horses in its stable, this 4C is.
The dynamic differences are immediately obvious to Wang. “The powerband’s much more dramatic now. A lot of the hesitation down low is gone. I’d say that the tip-in on throttle is a bit more responsive as well.”
But what do those changes translate to when Wang goes flat out? Luckily for us, he makes sure to start a timer, then puts his right foot down – hard.
The tuned 4C charges to 60 mph in 4.34 seconds, besting the stock car’s time by 0.37 seconds. It hits 100 mph less than six seconds later; that same run took the regular 4C 11.73 seconds. The timer reads 12.77 when the 4C passes the quarter mile mark doing 108.11 mph – an improvement of 0.37 seconds and 2.21 mph.
The difference between OEM and tuned is even more dramatic from 40 to 100 mph. That dash takes the factory car 7.81 seconds and the modified one 8.64 seconds. The stage 2 Alfa pulls ahead more going from 60 to 130 mph, only needing 15.3 seconds instead of 18.10. As Wang puts it, “A three-second gain here’s like driving a whole new car.”
What’s just as impressive as those lower times is how the tuned 4C clocks them. Wang says, “It’s one thing to turn up the boost on a turbocharged car and make a healthy power gain. It’s another thing to do that while making it drive like stock.” We’d say it’s another thing to drive a hopped-up Alfa as fast as you possibly can – something we’d like to see more.
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