Despite Alfa Romeo's attempts to clean up its act, the Spider only truly delivers on its outer appearance. Stunning but stunted, Paddy Comyntakes the Spider for a test drive and falls both in and out of love, in seven short days
SADLY, THAT old Alfa Romeo magic rears its head again.
I had promised myself that this review of the Alfa Romeo Spider would not follow the same line as so many other reviews on Alfa Romeos of late.
There is invariably a line or two about how this brand always produced cars that were beautiful to look at, but were unreliable and always a bit of a headache to own.
Reading these sorts of reviews on Alfa Romeos has become pretty darn tedious - I had wanted this one to be different.
Take a look at the photographs of the Spider, for a start. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder naturally, but few would argue that this is anything but a stunning-looking car. From every angle it oozes sex appeal. It is Sophia Loren: curvaceous, captivating and magnificent to behold.
It is just what Italian manufacturers do best and the kind of car that would take a Japanese brand a whole lot of tracing paper to produce.
Following on as it did from the beautiful Brera coupé, the Spider replaced the rather unimpressive previous generation model in 2007. Shorter and lower than the Brera, it also has unique suspension and comes with a choice of three engines: a 2.2-litre petrol, 3.2-litre V6 and our test car, a 2.4-litre JTDM Multijet diesel.
The interior is pure Alfa Romeo - lots of black leather and brushed aluminium with all the major controls facing the driver and a sporty driving position, where you sit quite low.
It's easy enough to get comfortable in too, and operating the roof mechanism is as simple as pressing a button between the seats to enjoy the full open-top experience.
Everything in the cabin feels well put together and - apart from the satellite navigation system, which has an exhaustive blend of voice controls and menus - everything works well.
The diesel unit in the Spider is rather a good one, and one that Alfa Romeo can be proud of, with 200bhp and 400Nm of torque.
With the new CO2 laws now in full swing, diesel technology is very much in vogue, but this 2.4-litre diesel, twinned here as it is, with the Q-Tronic automatic, resides in Band F with 208g/km which means 32 per cent VRT and €1,000 per annum in motor tax.
Twinned with a manual gearbox it fares a little better with 179g/km and a Band E rating, but when you compare this to the 144g/km managed by the Audi TT Roadster diesel, then you can spot the difference: €710 in motor tax every year for a start.
Sure, the Alfa might have more power on paper - 200bhp versus Audi's 170bhp - but the Audi will take almost a second less to get to 100km/h than the automatic Spider and is still faster to this mark than the manual version, thanks in no small part to its lighter body.
The Alfa is something of a weighty character, at 1,635kg, which is 130kg more than the 2.2-litre version and 220kg heavier than the Audi TT Roadster diesel.
BMW doesn't have a diesel equivalent in the Z4, but their 2.0-litre petrol version weighs 340kg less than the Spider - that's 53 stone. It's this weight that you feel when you first get to grips with the Spider. It feels pretty nose-heavy, not light and agile like it should.
This 2.4-litre diesel engine has to work pretty hard and you are thankful of all that torque off the line, but even it struggles compared with its more lightweight rivals.
Twinned with this diesel engine in our test car was the Q-Tronic gearbox, which is a recent advance on Alfa Romeo's automatic gearbox with paddle shifters behind the steering wheel.
It works well, but the paddles don't feel as responsive as they possibly should and when you try to change down coming into a corner, the gearbox won't let you. Instead you are simply met with an indignant beep from the dashboard. This could be down to the low rev range of the diesel engine, but it's still disappointing. Eventually, you tend to just let the gearbox do its own thing, mindful of using the paddles if you want to overtake or really push the car on.
On back roads, the Spider does feel a little unsettled. The suspension is pretty hard and some of our country roads do catch it out - combined with its weight, these appeared to cause the Spider some problems.
You see, a few days into my test of the Spider, I was to experience the full range of joys of Alfa ownership in one little microcosm.
Having enjoyed the brief periods of sunshine, I remarked that I wasn't overly convinced of twinning this diesel and gearbox with a roadster, but in general I was pretty taken by the whole romance of the package. Then it all started to go wrong.
The impressive diesel engine of which I was starting to become quite fond of appeared to want to be in another car. Coming out one morning, I started the Spider up to be met by a rather ugly sound of vibrations and judders.
Turning the wheel felt like grinding up stones with a pestle and mortar. Something clearly wasn't right.
A quick trip to the friendly - and very helpful - dealer revealed that one of the bolts had come loose in the engine mount. It was a 20-minute job to put right, but in a car that had barely seen the light of day, it wasn't very impressive.
It is just this sort of fault that does nothing to lend much credibility to Alfa Romeo's claim that it is putting things right. Sure, things can go wrong in any car, but would this have happened so early in an Audi TT or a BMW Z4?
When you start drawing comparisons with such rivals, the news isn't great for the Spider either. It is probably fair to say that it conquers all when it comes to looks in this price bracket, but when you start comparing prices, things get a little tricky for the Alfa.
Our test car was €58,890 and there is quite a wealth of choice for this sort of price.
Bearing in mind that some of the benefits of going for the diesel version will be fuel economy, the diesel automatic sits in Band F, so it's still going to cost you €1,000 to tax.
You can have the Audi TT Roadster for €50,750. It is lighter, quicker off the line and will cost you less to run per year. There is no confirmation of an automatic transmission for the diesel TT yet, but it would appear that customers are looking for one, so we will have to just wait and see.
The BMW Z4 roadster starts at €48,481, but for the same price as this Spider you can have a 2.5 SE petrol automatic, which will cost you no more to tax per year than the Alfa.
You could also have a Mercedes-Benz SLK 200 automatic for €2,635 less than the Spider diesel automatic.
Certainly, this will matter little to anyone who falls head over heels for the Spider, and with so many of these cars bought on pure emotional appeal, then we can at least be sure that this is bound to happen. Faults aside, this is simply a beautiful car.
The merits of the diesel might be better fuel economy, but the noise doesn't match the car's looks and it would be hard not to stump up the extra money for the 3.2-litre V6.
Surely anyone shopping for a car in this segment won't be crunching numbers too tightly - and fuel economy is likely to be low on their priority list.
Has Alfa Romeo buried its demons? Judging by my week of Alfa "ownership", then not quite. It is still a car that can both delight and infuriate in the same seven days.
Engine:2,387cc, 4-cylinder turbo diesel engine putting out 200bhp @ 4,000rpm and 400Nm of torque @ 2,000. Six-speed manual transmission.
Specification:standard features include 17" DIS NR 4 PNEUM alloy wheels with 225/50 R17 tyres, full electric hood, tyre kit, rear parking sensor built into the bumper with obstacle approaching warning, volumetric anti-theft and anti-lifting protection, visbility pack (rain sensor, twilight sensor, misting sensor) electric windows, electric door mirrors, heated door mirrors, remote central locking, climatic air conditioning, leather steering wheel, start/stop button, ABS brakes, front and side airbags, electronic stability programme, traction control.
Options include:heated seats with memory €595, passenger kneebag €195, metallic paint €795, pastel paint €395, seats in Pelle Frau leather €595, Bi-Xenon headlights and headlamp washers €700, tyre pressure sensor €395, radio CD/ MP3 player €95, 17" alloys €395, 18" alloys €895, Blue & Me with USB connection €295, boot- mounted CD-changer €525, map radio navigator, GSM hands-free phone and voice controls €2,450, Bose Hi-Fi system with digital amplifier €795, cargo retaining net €95, windstop €595
L/100KM (MPG) urban:11.4 (24.7); extra-urban: 5.8 (48.7); combined: 7.9 (35.7)
CO2 emissions:208g/km (Band F - 32 per cent VRT) and €1,000 motor tax
Price:€58,890