1980 Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce , Runs And Looks Good, 5 Spd Manual on 2040-cars

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Fiat reconsidering Mazda-based Alfa Romeo roadster? [w/poll]

Alfa giveth and Alfa taketh away. With apologies to Job (he has gone through a lot, after all), that's how things are looking at the Italian automaker - whether it's the promise of new products or its impending return to the North American market. But it's especially true when it comes to new roadsters.
While Alfa Romeo is expected to unveil the 4C Spider at the Geneva Motor Show this week, reports are now suggesting that its other roadster project is being called into question. That project is a joint venture between Fiat and Mazda, which was set to produce a version of its next MX-5 Miata as an Alfa Romeo, and was even changing the design to accommodate Alfa's requirements.
Now it appears, however, that the whole project in doubt. The problem seems to stem from Sergio Marchionne's pronouncements that, as long as he's in charge, there won't be an Alfa Romeo built outside of Italy.

Alfa Romeo 4C Spider reportedly dead in Europe, only dealer stock remains

It's been hard to get a reliable prognosis concerning Alfa Romeo in general, and especially hard to figure out what's in store for the brand in the United States. Last year the automaker canceled the 4C coupe, last week the brand's future product roadmap appeared to deep-six the anticipated GTV and 8C sports cars in order to focus on more efficient spending in more important segments. In February of this year, Alfa Romeo launched the 4C Spider Italia in a run of just 15 units, the two biggest surprises about that car being the $73,495 price and the fact that it extended the model's run into 2020. We're not yet into 2020, but it looks like the party's over. The French outpost of Motor1 is said to have confirmed with Alfa Romeo that the 4C Spider has ceased production. According to the report, the only 4Cs left across the Atlantic are the ones currently in dealer inventory.  Autoblog asked Alfa Romeo to confirm the news, a spokesman responded by e-mail, "I can't speak for other markets but the US 4C Spider is not cancelled and is still available for order." Introduced in 2015, the 4C Spider still gets on with a turbocharged four-cylinder putting out 237 horsepower and 258 pound-feet of torque. The 4C Spider needs an irrational generosity to love and drive every day, but the last OEM sports car on sale without power steering knows how to thrill when pushed. Our guess is that, overseas, exotic construction and communicative, go-kart handling couldn't make up for a high price relative to the established competition and lack of interior amenities and ultimate refinement. If the European news is true, sales figures lead us to believe it is but a matter of time before the same ax finds its way to the U.S. Alfa Romeo sold 421 4Cs in Europe last year, compared to 238 in the U.S. This year European dealers sold 196 units through the end of September, U.S. dealers moved 127. If we did lose the open-top sports car before 2021, the move would leave the Giulia sedan and Stelvio SUV as Alfa Romeo's entire U.S. lineup until more crossover-type vehicles show in 2021. No matter what happens, perhaps by 2021 Alfa Romeo will know precisely where it needs to go and have a clear plan for getting there, and perhaps it will be able to do so with the platform and financial resources within a merged Fiat-Chrysler-PSA Group entity. Even for fun, full-throated products, it's hard to get on in today's market without full-throated focus, support, and marketing.

A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.