Car enthusiast Ben Major has sold his AC Cobra to buy an Alfa Romeo 4C, and he says he loves the switch. The sale funded a purchase from a dealer in Scotland, a car Major had first looked at through online videos before committing to it. Watching footage rather than inspecting the car in person was the starting point for a deal that would take him hundreds of miles from his home.
Major collected the car after a long and delayed train journey south, a trip that ended with a partial refund on his ticket because of the disruption. The journey was an ordeal in itself, but once the car was in his hands the mood changed. He then drove the 4C home to Surrey, a trip he describes as uneventful. The car was registered in 2014 and had covered about 10,000 miles, which made it a low-mileage example of a model that was built to be driven rather than parked. Major paid £37,500 for it, against a new price of roughly £45,000, a saving that made the swap from a V8 roadster to a small mid-engined Alfa financially sensible as well as emotionally appealing.
Major's garage history is varied. Before the 4C he owned an Audi RS4, a Maserati Indy, an E-Type, a Mini and a Subaru WRX STI, and he still keeps a Subaru Legacy estate, so he is not a stranger to fast and characterful machinery. His previous Alfa was a 1956 Giulietta, which he bought with a friend and which, by his account, was mostly filler. That earlier car gave him a long acquaintance with the marque's temperament, and it is a thread that runs through his decision to return to Alfa Romeo. The Cobra, by contrast, was a V8 machine with a very different character, and it is the one he has now left behind.
The 4C has won him over on the road. Major praises its light, agile handling, which he finds rewarding at speed and on the twisting roads he favours. The ride, however, is firm, and he is candid that the carbonfibre tub lets noise and road stones come through noticeably. These are the compromises of a car designed around weight saving and a stripped-back cabin, and Major accepts them as part of the deal rather than as faults to be ignored. Because the car is relatively new to him, he has taken a careful approach to upkeep. It has been serviced twice at Bianco Auto Developments, near Gatwick. Those visits were checkovers and minor tweaks rather than anything serious, which has reassured him that the car is in sound mechanical order.
Major plans to take the car to a Goodwood Road Racing Club event, a setting where the 4C's handling strengths can be tested on track rather than on public roads. Not everyone in his household is convinced by the switch. His wife found the Cobra uncomfortable, which may have made the change easier to justify, but she is unwilling to join him on a trip through the Alps. The 4C is not a grand tourer, and Major does not pretend otherwise: it is a sports car built for short, focused drives rather than long-distance comfort. For him, that focus is exactly the appeal, and the car he bought in Scotland is the one he intends to keep driving.