Our beloved Alfa Romeo 4C, the Ferrari Dino successor we didn’t ask for but lovingly accept, is inching even further toward a fizzling demise. With the coupe already dead, the Spider has now been killed in Europe. The end is nigh.
It was September of this year when we remembered you could still order a brand new Alfa Romeo 4C Spider in the U.S., though the hardtop coupe did indeed die back in the summer of 2018. As it turns out, the Spider also died in 2018 for the European, Middle Eastern and African markets, but I’m not sure we noticed hence the news just now getting confirmation from FCA.
That leaves just the Asian Pacific and North American markets open to ordering the Spider, at least through to the 2020 model year, and whatever else may be left in dealer inventories elsewhere.
That’s actually sort of surprising, as Autoblog points out, because the factory in Modena, Italy that builds the 4C is getting a major retooling and overhaul following the end of the current Maserati GranTurismo and GranCabrio, which are also built there.
You would think the urge to just wipe the slate clean on the 4C too would have been too great, but the 4C perseveres for yet another year.
Alfa has sold 127 4Cs so far this year, and introduced the Italia special edition for the 2020 model year, exclusive to just 15 cars. It feels like within a year, this will be a car we all enjoy to forget about and remember again, cyclically, for the rest of our crossover-dominated lives.