Alfa Romeo 4C Spider priced from $99,000

Losing some bodywork around you may be familiar to older Alfa Romeo owners (ahem) but the 4C Spider has taken it off in all the right places.

The local outlet will sell the open-top version of the hard-top 4C mini-supercar for a $10K premium, from $99,000 plus on-road costs, and Alfa dealers are taking orders now ahead of November 2015 delivery.

The 4C Spider only weighs 10kg more than the 4C coupe, adding a carbonfibre-reinforced windshield frame and aluminium roll bar among other changes to help ensure torsional rigidity. Part of the reason for the limited weight gain is also down to the manually removable soft-top lid, which can be stored away in a bag in the boot.

The 1035kg 4C Spider can therefore use the same 1.75-litre turbocharged four-cylinder with 177kW and 350Nm mated with a six-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission to achieve a coupe-matching 4.5sec 0-100km/h.

The two-seat 4C Spider places neatly in between the $84,990 Lotus Elise S, manual-only with a 4.6sec 0-100km/h, and the $109,690 Porsche Boxster, with PDK auto achieving a 5.7sec 0-100km/h. For performance, it’s faster than both, and you’ll need to stretch to a $137,990 Exige S Roadster automatic to go faster roof-down (4.0sec 0-100km/h).

There will be no Launch Edition specification for the 4C Spider as there was with the coupe version, which retailed at $109,000 with special race suspension and exhaust.

As with the coupe, Fiat Chrysler Australia isn’t capping the number of Spiders coming to this country but it says supply will be limited by the hand-built nature of Modena production and there are a “significant” number of pre-orders so far.