One year on from collecting the 4C I have had some great experiences, from driving across France to early morning drives and breakfast meets at Goodwood. The car has been brilliant. On the run up to Christmas the car was booked in with our Alfa Romeo service department for its first service. This was an oil and filter change plus the bolt tightening check. This is about an 8 hour job all in, nearly all the bodywork needs to be removed the access the bolts going into the Carbon Tub and a few other relating components. I will provide a picture at the bottom of this page. It’s quite involved but very interesting to look at once completely apart. This also allows closer inspection of components which are normally hidden behind the bodywork. The service went smoothly and nothing to report on the health check. It was two weeks later that I had my first “fault” with the 4C. I had been to do some Christmas shopping in Kingston and parked in a multi-story car park. As I was coming out I heard a loud knock from the passenger side front suspension, one thing about Carbon Tubs is they really magnify sounds. This was loud so I limped the car home and call Alfa’s assistance service. They came and collected the car and dropped it down to HWM Alfa Romeo. It didn’t take long to find the problem. The passenger side lower arm ball joint had failed, causing the knocking. This part was ordered under warranty and the car was back on the road a couple of days later.
Over Christmas the car was faultless and it wasn’t till February I had the next little “niggle”. The boot started leaking and collecting water. Luckily only the owner’s manuals were in there. I took the car back to HWM Alfa Romeo and a new boot, boot seal, seal and owner’s manuals were ordered and all covered by warranty and sorted the issue out. From my experience so far Alfa Romeo’s aftersales care has been very good. Responsive and the parts so far have been readily available.
Throughout the spring, a few friends and I were planning our next road trip. We had decided on Barcelona as the final destination but the route was still being planned. We didn’t want to spend too long driving down there to only spend a day or two in Barcelona so we decided to do a long drive on the first day and aim to go from Surrey down to Mende (just inside Parc National des Cevennes, in the south of France). This was 663 miles in one day, easily doable!
I will expand on our trip to the Barcelona in the next part but we found some amazing roads, lovely small villages in the national park and driving through the Pyrenees was memorable.
Thanks for reading.
Oliver White