‘Most beautiful’ car to land in NZ in June

February 7, 2014 by Alastair Sloane

Alfa Romeo 4C

The car judged to be the “most beautiful of 2013” will go on sale in New Zealand towards the middle of this year.

Alfa Romeo 4C

Alfa Romeo 4C

Alfa Romeo 4C

The Alfa Romeo 4C received an overwhelming 41 per cent of votes in a global internet survey linked to France’s annual Automobile Festival of Chamonix.

It left its rivals in the dust. The BMW 4-Series got 25 per cent support, the Mercedes-Benz CLA 22 per cent and the Mazda3 12 per cent.

The festival has been celebrating automotive design since 1988, when the Alfa Romeo 164 won the inaugural ‘most beautiful’ accolade. Other Alfas to win were the Brera coupe in 2005 and the MiTo hatchback in 2008.

The latest title extends the series of British and European awards reaped by the 4C.

New Zealand distributors Fiat Chrysler say the 4C will land here in June “in limited numbers.” The price will be known closer to launch. As a rough guide, the 4C in Britain costs the equivalent of $90,000.

The 4C first appeared as a concept at the 2011 Geneva motor show. The production version is a mix of carbon-fibre chassis and composite bodywork. The car tips the scales at only 895kg without fuel.

Power comes from a 170kW/350Nm 1.8-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engine mounted east-west behind the two seats and driving the rear wheels via a six-speed duel-clutch gearbox. Alfa Romeo claims a 0-100km/h time of 4.9 seconds.

The 4C is being built at Maserati’s Modena factory in Italy – where the Maserati GranTurismo and GranCabrio are made – at the rate of around 3500 cars a year.

It was designed by Lorenzo Ramaciotti of the Alfa Romeo Style Centre, who also helped pen the Lotus Elite and Exige and 10 Ferrari designs.

If you are in a position to shell out upwards of NZ$600,000 for the 60^thanniversary Porsche 911 S/T or optional Porsche 911 S/T Heritage, you’ll no doubt want the signature titanium watch that goes with it. That’s how Porsche figures it anyway. Or, if you want the watch you’ll need to get the car. Both the car and the watch are limited to 1963 units, the year the original 911 model broke cover. The watch – Chronograph 1 911 S/T and Chronograph 1 911 S/T Heritage – and the car carry matching edition numbers. The watch is priced at $US13,500, or around $NZ22,200. The car, says Porsche NZ, starts at $NZ608,000. A “strictly limited number” will go into production for NZ early next year.

Eight European Union countries are pushing to weaken new EU emissions limits for cars, saying they are overly ambitious and unrealistic for carmakers to hit. The eight countries – France, Italy, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia – said in a joint paper that parts of the proposed Euro 7 regulation, including curbs on exhaust pipe emissions, should be scrapped entirely. They said the limits would force carmakers to invest in improving exhaust emissions performance, money which would be better spent on developing zero-emission vehicles. Taken together, the countries would have enough votes to block the proposal.

A go-anywhere EV concept for the US military uses an onboard 12kW diesel generator to top up the batteries on the move. The all-wheel-drive has 800-volt technology and a 200kWh battery pack to power three electric motors, two in the rear and one up front. Claimed output is 745kW/15,590Nm, or 1000hp and 11,500 ft-lb of torque. The four-seater was developed by the defence division of General Motors and is based on the platform of the Hummer SUV. It rides on Fox performance shock absorbers and 37-inch tyres and comes with “exceptional” approach and departure angles for off-road mobility. Maximum range using the generator to keep things ticking over is said to be around 500km.

The outside temperature in Midland, Texas, was 40.5C when staff at the local office of the US National Weather Service set out to show the cabin of a closed car can literally get baking hot in summer. They mixed up a batch of chocolate chip cookies and laid them on the car’s dashboard – the surface of which showed a temperature of 87.7C. A little over four hours later the cookies were ready to eat. “Even though ours weren’t golden brown, we can confirm that they are done and delicious,” the staff wrote on Facebook.