What's the difference?
Nothing could’ve better prepared me for my drive in the 2019 Alfa Romeo 4C than a trip to Sydney’s Luna Park.
There’s a rollercoaster there called Wild Mouse - an old-school, single carriage coaster with no loop-the-loops, no high-tech trickery, and with each ride limited to just with two seats apiece.
The Wild Mouse throws you around with very little regard for your comfort, gently impinging your fear factor by making you consider the physics of what is happening underneath your backside.
It’s an unbridled adrenaline rush, and genuinely scary at times. You get off the ride thinking to yourself, “how the hell did I survive that?”.
The same can be said with this Italian sports car. It’s blisteringly quick, it’s superbly agile, it handles like it has rails attached to its underbody, and it could potentially do brown things to your underpants.
To say the BMW M4 CS is a hot ticket in Australia is something of an understatement.
Consider this. There is an even more expensive one, the M4 CS Edition VR46 – at a cool $346,900 – and it sold out in less than an hour. Now, granted, Australia only got four examples, but still, demand was running hot.
That car makes this one, the regular M4 CS, seem like an absolute steal. It's only $254,900 (yes, the word 'only' is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence), and it shares the same upgrades, and makes the same monstrous power, as the VR46 – for Valentino Rossi’s 46th birthday – only it does it for around $100K less.
See? A bargain. At least, that's how I'd be justifying it to myself if I had a quarter of a million burning a hole in my pocket.
So, this or a Porsche 911? Read on.
People might wonder if there’s a reason to buy an Alfa Romeo 4C. It has some great dollar-for-dollar competitors - the Alpine A110 does most of the things the Alfa does, but in a more polished way. And then there’s the Porsche 718 Cayman, which is a considerably more, well, considered option.
But there is no doubt the 4C stands alone, a sort-of cut-price alternative to a Maserati or Ferrari, and nearly as rare to spot on the road as those cars, too. And just like the rollercoaster at Luna Park, it’s the sort of car that’ll leave you wanting another go.
Brutal, bruising and utterly brilliant, the M4 CS will be an acquired taste due to its no-compromise approach, but those willing to take the leap will find a performance car like few others at their disposal.