Arthur St.Antoine: Do you remember Alfa Romeo? Well you are forgiven if you don't because it's been 14 years since the Italian maker sold a car in the United States but now Alfa is back and they are back big with this beautiful 8C Competizione. This the brand after all that dominated Le Man in the 1930. This is the brand that built the famous Duetto Roadster that Dustin Hoffmann drove in the Graduate. And now they have created this incredible 2 seat super car, crafted almost entirely in carbon fiber designed by Wolfgang Egger who has since moved on to Audi. It's an absolutely luscious piece full of milled aluminum beautiful leather and that striking body. But underneath don't forget its an Italian super car and that means a Ferrari based V8 engine making 450 horse power. All the bells and whistles let's take it for a drive.
From 1931 to 1934 Alfa Romeo won the Le Man 24 hour race four times in a row. The name of that car the, 8C. Now we are driving in its reincarnation the new 8C Competizione. This began as design study was first shown at the 2003 Frankfurt Motor Show but now it's matured into a fully developed super car. Underneath, we have a chassis from the Maserati grand sport. The body is designed entirely in carbon fiber and created by an after market supplier. The engine is a Ferrari Maserati V8 bored and stroked to 4.7 liter in making 450 horse power, and connected to the V8 is a 6 speed auto clutch transmission.
Speaker 2: Gun the 8C from a standstill and it revs to at 7500 rpm redline with so much sonic splendor, it's owners like they won't even what acceleration numbers it achieves. We get paid to note such things of course. It matched to 0-60 mile per hour sprint of 4.6 seconds and a quarter mile of 12.8 seconds at 112.5 miles per hours. That's plenty quick, though in world of 3.2 second GTR, and Corvette 0.1's hardly a headline performance. Now, listen again to that RAF pumping and high angle valves at bellowing wide mouth exhausts. Do you really care?
Handling wise the 8C is not the leader in its group. Click off the traction control and the tail will rotate with only a quick dab of throttle and you can have up to 0.94g of grip as it performed a throttle steering dance but the 8C doesn't have the handling dexterity of such rivals as the lambo Gallardo or the Ferrari F 430. It's simply a far less edgy machine preferring a more gentile approach to twisty road handling. Even though it lacks carbon ceramic binders, the 8C's big discs do a superb job of the racing forward momentum, stops from 60 mile an hour require just a 101 feet.
Arthur St.Antoine: There are elements of Ferrari and Maserati in this 8C but it feels different, it sounds different and in fact it's a very limited production piece, just 500 examples are going to be built world wide and only about 80 of those are coming to United States, this is one of those cars.
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