Caught In Spider's Web

Illawarra Mercury

Saturday September 29, 2007

BRENT DAVISON

ALFA ROMEO SPIDER 2.2 JTS

Its styling is stunning, its engine willing and its animal magnetism undeniable but why, asks BRENT DAVISON, does Alfa Romeo's all-new Spider have such a flexible chassis?

When it comes to automotive styling no-one is going to give the Italians the flick.

Pininfarina, Michelotti, Bertone and co can make even the most modest of city commuter cars look all silk scarf and sunglasses and when they are given free rein with their pencils at the more upmarket stuff well, the sky is close to the limit.

Let me put that another way: if you cannot find mouthwatering satisfaction just by looking at Alfa Romeo's latest 159-based Spider then you must be dead.

Or at least that seemed to be the feeling I got whenever I drove my Spider test car. If the sharp nose, the overall low-slung looks and the prominent rear haunches did not grab peoples' attention then the growly engine, Alfa Romeo badging and the Italian-ness of it all did.

An aspirational car? Sure and with a more than passing resemblance to those dream cars sketched in our maths textbooks so many years ago. We can always use a calculator but we cannot always drive an Alfa Spider.

I blame Dustin Hoffman who used an abused Duetto Spider to get the (old) girl in the movie The Graduate all those years ago.

Forty years and God knows how many generations on, the old Spider is still just a weeny bit visible in this latest car, if not physically then certainly spiritually.

Sure, it has lost its styling simplicity but its overall profile is there from the flat nose, through the close-coupled cockpit and ending at the tapered tail.

It has bulked up a lot over the generations though and become a bit menacing as well. The six-light mask incorporating the triangular, shield-like radiator grille looks predatory and the low airdam that rises out and back into the wide front wheelarches combines with the profiled bonnet to give an appearance of muscularity.

The bonnet's shoulders flow back into the windscreen pillars and the cockpit ends in a pair of rollbars behind the seats, each complete with its own small capote and with a glass anti-turbulence screen between the rollbars.

Out the back? The broad decklid, the aforementioned haunches and flared mudguards wrapping over wide alloy wheels and big tyres complete the picture.

In practical terms the nice thing about the Spider is its accessibility with even Fat Frank able to slip comfortably into the passenger's seat without grazing his forehead on the corner of the windscreen surround.

In less practical terms the Spider is one of only a handful of drop tops to soldier on with a fabric roof rather than the more practical metal or composite plastic tops. Sure, it is all managed electrically which is nice but it still has security issues and is not as quiet as a hardtop.

Not that quietness is something for consideration in the Spider because it is a fairly noisy little beast courtesy of some serious exhaust growl (Ok, that's a good thing) and a lot of road noise generated by the low-profile tyres and promoted by the suspension.

Wind noise around the roof, windows and mirrors is surprisingly good but there is simply not enough insulation in the rag top to keep out noise of any substance. The soft top has not really managed to help keep the weight down though with our Spider hitting the scales at a plump 1470kg and that's around 155kg up on Audi's TT Roadster.

The engine, the latest development of Alfa Romeo's JTS (jet-thrust stoichiometric) direct-injection family, is a very willing worker and, again, harks back to earlier Alfas where a snapping, snarling, smallish-capacity twin cammer was the norm and working it hard was an expectation rather than a chore.

In this case the 2.2-litre, inline four makes a not over-stressed 136kW at a peaky 6500rpm and backs it with 230Nm of torque at 4500rpm. Not that you need the torque so much because in our test car the very workable six-speed manual gearbox simply cried out to be worked.

So we did, finding roads that made us want to slap the gearlever around a bit, do a bit of a soft shoe shuffle across the pedals and generally have a bit of fun.

And therein lay our biggest problem with the car: its chassis. You see driving a car in any sort of spirited fashion these days requires finding the right road and the right one is usually a less-than-smooth country number with off-camber corners, switchbacks, pot holes and the like.

The Spider does not like those kinds of roads or, put another way, we did not like the Spider on those kinds of roads.

In the transition from the 156 platform to the 159 platform, the car has gained a little bit of stiffness but the chassis is still very flexible both across and along the car to the point where punching it just a little becomes hard yakka as it flexes and shakes.

Rather than finessing a thoroughbred, driving the Spider on such roads is more like taming a brumby. You don't simply ease it through corners, you grab it by the scruff of the neck and throw it through.

Which is such a pity because the Spider is a car that deserves to be given its head on a quiet and empty back road every now and then.

But it looks sensational and loves billiard table-smooth blacktop. It is also pretty good as a chick magnet. Just ask Dustin Hoffman.

NUTS & BOLTS

PRICE $69,990.

DIMENSIONS Length - 4410mm; width - 1830mm; height - 1318mm; weight - 1470kg.

MECHANICAL 2.2-litre, inline four-cylinder with double overhead camshafts, four-valves per cylinder, variable valve timing, direct fuel-injection. 136kW@6500rpm, 230Nm@4500rpm. Six-speed manual.

CHASSIS Front, transverse engine, front-wheel-drive, power-assisted rack-and-pinion steering, four-wheel disc brakes with anti-lock, electronic brakeforce distribution, traction control.

SUSPENSION Independent double wishbones, coil springs, telescopic dampers and anti-roll bar front, independent multi-links, coil spring, telescopic dampers rear. 18x8-inch alloy wheels, 235/45R18 tyres.

FUEL TYPE/CAPACITY 95RON/70litres.

FUEL ECONOMY 9.4L/100km.