2015 Alfa Romeo 4C

2015 Alfa Romeo 4C

Episode 3408 , Episode 3421
Auto Value and Bumper to BumperTire Rack "The Way Tire Buying Should Be"

Over the years, predictions of Alfa Romeo’s immanent return to the US have been many. But actual cars for driving have been few. Well, that all changes now with this car, the Alfa Romeo 4C. And it’s fitting that the brand chose this back-to-basics fun-machine to re-launch a dealer network here in the states. After all, this car is all about the driving. 

Yes, the 2015 Alfa Romeo 4C is not a car for everyone. But, if you’re the type that enjoys the straightforward, back-to-basics thrill ride of a sports car; then consider yourself lucky… your new ride just arrived. 

Making things as light as possible is always a great sports car strategy, and this mid-engine monocoquester weighs in at only 2,465-pounds. Yes, that’s not as light as the European model, but trust us you won’t notice the additional 100-pounds or so added to meet U.S. crash standards. 

Unfortunately, that minimalism takes its toll on the interior. There’s very little storage space or comfort to be found; and crawling in is not graceful for anyone on the high side of 6-feet or on the wrong side of 50. Foot well area is actually plentiful though, except for some slight intrusion on the left side; and the seats have a decent amount of travel. It’s the passenger that actually gets squeezed a bit more.

Seats feel like leather covered racing buckets with some extreme bolstering, and there’s just enough padding in them to drain the fuel tank. 

Burning up that fuel is a fun-size 1.7-liter I4 engine. Don’t let the small volume fool you. This little turbo cranks up 237-horsepower and 258 lb-ft. of torque with almost 22 psi of boost. Do you remember when 100-horsepower per liter was a big deal? It looks like those days are long gone.   

Government Fuel Economy Ratings are 24-City, 34-Highway, and 28-Combined…which keeps the Energy Impact Score fairly good at 11.8-barrels of yearly oil use with CO2 emissions of 5.2-tons.

All 4Cs have a paddle shifted twin-clutch automatic transmission for gearing duties. In typical exotic car fashion, it’s not super smooth when tooling in auto mode and it seems in a hurry to get you into higher gears if you let it. But, get more aggressive and drive the car like it was meant to be driven and it responds beautifully.  

Equally satisfying is the handling experience with is just pure joy, the way only mid-engine cars with close to 50/50 weight distribution can be. In a break from just about every car on the road, steering is fully manual with no power assist. While that will certainly have its detractors, if you’re buying this car to actually drive it, you won’t mind it at all. 

That certainly brings nostalgia to mind, but that’s just the beginning. There’s an upright 60’s driving position that has you looking directly down on the road. The engine is located right behind your head, with a new kind of direct injection; one that injects performance feel directly into your head. But as cool as it sounds, it can also get a little old after prolonged exposure. 

There’s a good, thick, flat bottom wheel for the hands; and there’s a real sensation of the road rushing up at you, even when cruising around town. You don’t have to be travelling at arrest worthy speeds to get a full sensory overload rush from this car. 

Tires feel every groove in the pavement, and since there’s a direct link to your hands, so do you. You also get a sense that this car will bite you if you’re not judicious with throttle application. You really have to go back to 60s or 70s exotics to get a comparable driving experience. 

Acceleration is much more in the modern era. There’s plenty of grip for launching; and a quick trip to 60 is possible in just over 4.0-seconds. Shifts occur in a nanosecond and hit hard, accompanied by a sound symphony of mechanical chaos directly behind you. ¼-mile times are in the 13.0-second range at 106 miles-per-hour. The brakes are full-on “beast mode”; laser straight, nice stiff pedal, and stops of just 99-feet from 60. 

Equally adept at bringing a halt to things are the 4C’s beautiful, pure Italian lines. It looks like a baby Ferrari especially in this vibrant red. Spectacular from just about every angle, with the same basic mid-engine proportion layout that worked so well for the prancing horse for decades.  

The 4C Launch Edition is all that’s available for the time being, and it’ll cost you $69,695; but once they’re gone a base 4C will start at $55,195.

That makes the 2015 Alfa Romeo 4C a small-scale exotic for a fraction of the price; truly a unique experience. It’s not a race car, and it’s not a poseur mobile. It’s a car designed with one thing in mind, driving!

Specifications

  • Engine: 1.7 liter
  • Horsepower: 237
  • Torque: 258 lb-ft.
  • 0-60 mph: 4.3 seconds
  • 1/4 mile: 13.0 seconds @ 106 mph
  • EPA: 24 mpg city/ 34 mpg highway
  • Energy Impact: 11.8 barrels of oil/yr
  • CO2 Emissions: 5.2 tons/yr
2025 Subaru WRX tS 11

2025 Subaru WRX tS

Subaru’s “World Rally eXperimental” Gets Tecnica-Tuned Tech

Episode 4427
Auto Value and Bumper to BumperTire Rack "The Way Tire Buying Should Be"

Building on its global rally heritage, WRX has been a standalone Subaru nameplate, marketed separately from garden variety Impreza, for two generations now. And while the current WRX still lacks the full STI treatment, this WRX tS serves up some of that high-performance spice we’ve been longing for.

Before we go flat out into our Track Test of this 2025 Subaru WRX tS, lets open the Subaru dictionary so we’re all on the same page. “tS” stands for “tuned by STI;” and “STI” is an acronym for “Subaru Tecnica International,” the brand’s high-performance sub-group best known for upgrading the WRX— oh, that stands for “World Rally eXperimental,” in case you didn’t know.

All that said, STI has been largely dormant for this WRX generation, but this tS sprinkles more of their engineering magic into the mix. No, that doesn’t mean extra power, but does mean significant chassis-related improvements.

First, electronically controlled dampers, adjustable through the 11.6-inch tablet-style infotainment screen. That meant a softer “comfort” mode on the 10+ hour commute to and from Savannah’s Roebling Road Raceway. But once we were there, it was the firmer “Sport+” setting all the way, heightening response from the WRX’s throttle and already quick dual-pinion power steering system. There’s still some body roll for rally-esque weight transfer, but it’s well sorted and provides the “toss-ability” you want in a WRX.

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Though if you do autocross your tS, which we implore you to do, you might feel the six-piston front, two-piston rear Brembo brakes first. The bite is strong, giving good rotation in the corners and plenty of “halt” for this 3,400 lb. compact with minimal fade, keeping us on track all week…until some unfortunate winter weather passed overhead. No worries here, as Subaru’s Symmetrical All-Wheel-Drive system got us to the track for some powdered deserts: Frosted donuts served up Michelin style, a set of winter tires different from the grippy Bridgestone Potenza S007 rubber the tS typically rides on. Some prior hot laps of California’s Sonoma Raceway gave credence to those Bridgestones, and showed us what this hot-compact can do in ideal conditions.

It’s well sorted and provides the “toss-ability” you want in a WRX.

Other tS enhancements are cabin-based, namely these beautiful blue Recaros. Most of our staff appreciated their moderately-aggressive bolstering on both street and track. And they’re even heated, too. Another tS-only appointment is this 12.3-inch digital gauge display. It mimics the standard analog gauges with some additional info, but can switch to a navigation mode for more convenient route guidance.

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We do wish our tS came in the new Galaxy Purple or the trademark World Rally Blue, but this Crystal White paint wasn’t too shabby, contrasting its Cherry Blossom Red badging and blacked-out lip spoiler. Otherwise, the tS is like any other WRX, down to the hood scoop funneling air to the top-mounted intercooler.

Underneath is the same turbocharged 2.4-liter flat-four in all other trims, boxing at 271 horsepower and 258 lb-ft of torque. The freak winter weather stopped straight-line testing, but a 0-60 time estimate of 5.5 seconds is about as spry as you realistically need, pulling strong through most of the tach; though the 6,000 RPM redline required attentive shifting of the six-speed box, which the tS comes exclusively with. The throws are precise, if a little long, and the clutch is wonderfully weighted.

With discontinuation of the Base trim, pricing for the WRX now starts with Premium at $36,920. The tS is at the top of the lineup with the automatic-only GT, both starting at $46,875. All WRXs continue to be made in Gunma, Japan.

If you’re an enthusiast itching to do the tuning yourself, perhaps the 2025 Subaru WRX tS is not for you. But if you want a plug-and-play experience, this is it. While it won’t exactly bestow the loose-cannon, top-level driving skills exhibited by famous WRC drivers upon you, the tS moves this WRX’s game in a direction we’ve so desperately wanted Subaru to take.

Specifications

As Tested

  • Engine: 2.4-liter flat-four
  • Tranmission: 6-speed manual
  • Horsepower: 271
  • Torque: 258 lb-ft
2025 Porsche 911 Carrera 23

2025 Porsche 911 Carrera

Ever Evolving 911 Reaches New Heights

Episode 4426
Auto Value and Bumper to BumperTire Rack "The Way Tire Buying Should Be"

The Porsche 911 has existed for 60 years now! Amazing! And, you could argue that major changes over all those years have been relatively few, as constant incremental improvement is more the way that Porsche does business. With that in mind, let’s hit the track in the latest 911 and see what constant improvement means for 2025.

We’ve driven so many 911s here at MotorWeek, each seemingly more special than the last, so it’s a bit refreshing to be ripping around Savannah’s Roebling Road Raceway in a 2025 Porsche 911 that’s about as close as you can get to base these days. And the fact that it’s just as fun as all those exclusive pieces says a lot about how far the 911 has come. Perhaps it also speaks to how much a base 911 will set you back today as well; more on that later.

For now, we’re just thinking about the next apex, holding steady throttle as we approach, and getting on it way sooner than you’d expect without upsetting anything, as the 911 rockets off the corner thanks to tremendous grip and a PDK trans that finds the perfect gear before we even gave it a thought. Even with very cold track temps, we never struggled for grip or battled any wheelspin coming off of corners. And trying to land it in that perfect spot in braking zones is easy with strong brake performance that was predictable and consistent lap after lap; no wandering, and great feedback too.

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Yes, even the standard 911 is near pure perfection on a racetrack. It gives you all the right feedback, stays incredibly flat through corners, makes you always feel totally in control, and again is just plain fun. Unless you’re chasing lap times, there’s really no need to head further up the 911 tree. Though it is worth noting the few upgrades that were on our Carrera did help the situation a little. The 20- and 21-inch Carrera S wheels enabled plenty of grip from the 305 Pirelli P Zero tires, the Sport Chrono Package allows 0-60 sprints of 3.7 seconds, an extended range fuel tank meant we could lap all day without having to fill up, and the fantastic Sport Seats provided great support and better comfort than we remember experiencing in a 911. The Sport Exhaust system didn’t add anything to performance, but made things sound a whole lot better, and the oval silver tips look great too.

We never struggled for grip or battled any wheel spin coming off of corners.

Our track time got cut short thanks to a rare snowstorm in Coastal Georgia, but the white stuff and blue sky made the perfect backdrop for our Guards Red Carrera. Exterior tweaks for what is officially the 992.2 include a reshaped front fascia with improved aerodynamics. All front lighting is now contained within the Matrix Design LED headlight housing. The rear fascia has also been smoothed out, the license plate moved higher, and Porsche 3D block lettering spelled out across the back beneath the active rear spoiler and new decklid grille.

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Even without Turbo in the name, the standard 911 engine is indeed a turbo these days, a 3.0-liter flat-six twin-turbo delivering 388 horsepower and 331 lb-ft strictly to the rear wheels in the Carrera Coupe.

Inside the cabin, the 911 continues its slow crawl towards the modern, now including a 12.6-inch fully digital gauge display and a start button located on the left side of the steering wheel, with drive modes easily accessible on the wheel itself. In another no brainer move, Porsche now makes the rear seat a no cost option, so you can choose if you want it or not.

Government Fuel Economy Ratings are 18 City, 25 Highway, and 21 Combined. That’s only slightly worse than average for the Energy Impact Score; 14.2 barrels of annual oil consumption with 7.0 tons of CO2 emissions.

The good news is this 911 had the fewest number of options of any Porsche that we’ve tested in some time, and it was still plenty awesome; the bad news is, a base Porsche 911 Carrera Coupe now starts at $122,095.

But can you really put value on “the force,” this mythical power that Porsche seems to have, that somehow turns average drivers into great ones? It’s useless to resist as far as we’re concerned, as it only gets better with the 2025 Porsche 911 Carrera.

Specifications

As Tested

  • Engine: 3.0-liter twin-turbo flat-6
  • Transmission: 8-speed PDK
  • Horsepower: 388
  • Torque: 331 lb-ft