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THE REVIEW: SPIDER TWIN SPARK
By Julian Edgar
AutoSpeed – Australia 1998
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The Alfa Romeo Spider and GTV are
the first of the new range of Alfas introduced to Australia after
a long absence from our market by the Fiat-owned company. The GTV
and Spider are (respectively) closed and open versions of much the
same car. In Australia the Spider is available with only the 2
litre four cylinder engine, while in other markets the car can be
bought with a 2 litre V6 turbo or the GTV’s 3 litre V6. So what’s
the Spider like?
Putting a Spider into your Australian driveway will set you back
A$66,000. For your money you get a mid-sized, front wheel drive
open sports car with most of the fruit supplied as standard. The
Spider (available only with a 5-speed manual tranny) comes with
dual funbags, 16 inch alloy wheels wearing exotic 205/50 Pirelli
P-Zeros, central locking (operable from either door), front and
rear foglights, and ABS. Inside the cabin you’ll find leather
seats, air, fast glass, twiddly mirrors, and a stereo AM/FM single
CD with front splits and a small rear sub. Extra price options
include a CD multi-stacker, satellite navigation, a Momo custom
leather interior package and metallic paint.
The cabin is a comfortable place to be. It has excellent
ventilation (yes, even with the top up!) and the air con is strong
and effective. The seats – while very firm – proved to be
supportive both when cornering hard and on long trips. The wheel
is adjustable for both reach and rake and so a comfortable driving
position can be easily found. However, no seat height adjustment
is provided, a problem since headroom is restricted. Tall
occupants may well have their head brushing the inside of the
fabric roof, and even when it is retracted, the top of the
windscreen is quite low, necessitating that the driver peer under
it when watching traffic lights. The indicator stalk is on the
left – the wrong side for a right-hand drive car.
However, the blight on the interior is not the available room or the
positions of the stalks. Instead it’s the dashboard, which is a
weird mishmash that would be more at home in an (albeit good
quality) home-built kit-car! Alfa say that the inside is "is
a mixture of modern Italian design… alongside retrospective
styling cues". If that means that the instruments have a
strong similarity to the early Seventies AlfaSud that may well be
the case, but in a modern car you don’t expect to be confronted
with bare Allen-key bolts holding in the dash panel, nor with
upper console gauges that point at your waist! Not only that, but
directly in front of the driver are two deeply recessed binnacles
holding the speedo and tacho. Unless your eyes are the same
distance apart as the instruments – that’s about 15cm – you need
to move your head from side to side to see the complete dials!
Then there’s the radio – an incredibly complex device using a
large LCD screen and multiple menus. For example, changing from AM
to FM requires no less than five separate steps! The CD slot is
hidden behind the faceplate, which tilts forward to reveal a
second poorly-finished panel. However the quality of the sound is
quite good, with excellent imaging from the high-mounted tweeters
and competent bass from the small sub which uses as its enclosure
the small lockable compartment situated behind the seats. There is
no back seat, the room being taken up by the space into which the
roof retracts. And at 110 litres, the boot is amongst the smallest
that you will find in any car. It also comes factory-filled
with a space-saver spare wheel.
The Spider’s 1970cc four cylinder engine develops 114kW (155hp) at
6200 rpm and 186Nm at four grand. An interesting engine design,
the DOHC, 4-valves-per-cylinder engine features twin balance
shafts, two plugs per cylinder and variable camshaft timing. The
head is alloy and the block cast iron. The spark plugs are not
fired simultaneously as might be imagined. Instead, the second
plug (offset within the chamber) fires 360 crankshaft degrees
after the main, centrally-mounted plug. This spark at the end of
the exhaust phase reduces the emissions output. The inlet camshaft
phasing is controlled by the ECU, being altered by up to 25
degrees to give full overlap from as low as 1800 rpm. Ninety
percent of peak torque is available from 2500 – 6200 rpm.
The Bosch Motronic M2.10.3 management system controls the
sequential injection, ignition coils, knock control, EGR, camshaft
timing and idle speed. Other tech highlights of the engine include
hydraulic tappets, a water/oil heat exchanger, cast alloy sump and
eight-weight steel crankshaft. Backing the mill is the 5 speed
trans with a 3.562 non-LSD final drive. The gearing is short, with
fifth a 0.946 ratio.
The engine is an absolute honey. Superbly responsive, the flat torque
curve means that there is always performance on tap. With 114kW
and 1370kg to haul around, the Spider is no road burner (Alfa
claim 0-100 km/h in 8.4 seconds, about a second quicker than we
recorded) but performance in any situation is always competent. In
fact it’s often better than competent, the low gearing and
creamy-smooth engine making the power just so useable, whether
you’re exiting a corner in second gear at the 7000 rpm redline or
just cruising in fourth with the top down. During our test – which
included 4000km of high speed, long distance driving – the Spider
averaged 10.4 litres/100 km (~27 miles per Imperial gallon), a
figure likely to be far thirstier than most owners will
experience. This is one engine that shows that Alfa still knows
how to make fours that are amongst the best in the world.
The Spider uses MacPherson struts at the front with lower
wishbones and an anti-roll bar. Rear suspension is sophisticated,
with the multi-link design anchored to a die-cast alloy sub-frame.
The rear suspension incorporates some passive rear wheel steering
and is designed to hold the wheels vertical in all cornering
conditions. The front suspension uses just over one degree of
negative camber, while the rear makes do with half of a degree. To
the naked eye it looks to be more than that, though. Steering is
by speed-sensitive rack and pinion with just 2.2 turns lock to
lock. However this figure is a little deceptive because at 10.8
metres, the Spider has a large turning circle, slowing the actual
steering response.
On
a twisty road the Spider is a damn good thing. The steering is
precise and is totally free of torque steer. It also has excellent
feedback, the feel becoming harsh only when the car is cornered
hard over broken bitumen – in that situation the wheel can kick
and jerk in your hands. The handling trait of the FWD car is
understeer, but you need to be going bloody hard before it starts
to happen! In fact, the car will initially start to understeer
before then doggedly hanging on, even with increased cornering
loads. Finally, when the front-end slide starts to become
excessive, you can back off a little, and the rear end will
gradually come out to balance the car. With power always on tap
from the responsive engine, you can play tunes positioning the car
on the road.
The Spider sits very flat when cornering, a characteristic that
often provides for skatey handling in the wet. But if anything,
the Alfa is even more impressive on a streaming wet road, the
understeer/oversteer balance almost as good as in the dry. The
P-Zeroes must take some credit for the handling prowess – those
and the incredibly high standard tyre pressures of 39 psi (front)
and 36 psi (rear). With these pressures and 50 series tyres, as
expected there’s some jiggliness to the ride. It’s at its worst
over small sudden bumps, while larger bumps are absorbed
competently. It’s not a car for a corrugated dirt road, though,
where the suspension bottoms-out audibly.
As expected from a soft-top, body rigidity is not high when
compared with a conventional coupe. In fact on Alfa’s own figures,
the Spider is 64 per cent less torsionally stiff than the
GTV. The Spider uses a large balance weight beneath the rear floor
to dial-out some of the body movement, but the scuttle still
shakes and the steering wheel moves laterally over some bumps. The
doors are very thick and heavy, and in addition to the normal
lock, use a second locating pin, presumably to help tie the body
together.
The brakes comprise 284mm (11.2 inch) ventilated discs on the
front and 240mm (9.4 inch) solid discs at the back. These and the
ABS work well, though when the ABS is activated in slow speed
situations, the control action is a little gentle – the car feels
as though it would stop quicker with less brake releases. In urban
driving the pads growl audibly, but this disappears with highway
kilometres.
Raising and lowering of the roof is dead-easy. If the top is up, two
mechanical catches that anchor the leading edge of the roof to the
header rail need to be released. After that it’s just a case of
pressing a button and watching the roof fold away under its own
metal, body-painted cover. The rear window is plastic and folds in
half during the roof retraction. When the flexible plastic wears
out it is easily replaced, being zipped and velcro’d into place.
The cabin is well-sealed with the roof up, allowing fast cruising
with a minimum of noise. Wind noise is present but it is more the
general rush of air over the multi-layer roof rather than specific
whistles. In the test car the roof had one annoying characteristic
– at around 100 km/h the mechanism directly above the driver’s
head squeaked constantly.
The over-riding impression gained of the Spider is that it is
simply a beautifully-integrated package. The engine is willing,
the handling excellent, the car practical (tiny boot excepted).
The light clutch, precise gearbox and steering, and powerful
brakes mean that this is way beyond just a car for posing, for
cruising the beachfront with the top down and the eye-catching
styling making an impact on the sidewalk cappuccino drinkers. Of
course, you can always do that too – and then go for a twisty road
blast that raises goosebumps on your arms…..
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