Alfa Romeo 4C factory visit
Excuse me, where are all the robots?
By Shahzad Sheikh
Whatever stereotypes you may have about Italian car factories, you’d better leave them at the door when you enter the Maserati factory in Modena to check out the Alfa Romeo 4C factory production line. There is an air of hushed intensity, unflinching focus, and determined dedication. Sure there’s no sense of urgency either, but that’s because there seems to be a solemn acknowledgement that a job done properly, takes as long as it takes.
But wait dear reader, you’re confused about something aren’t you? No, I know it’s not about the allusion to efficient and deliberate attention to car manufacturing in the land that has traditionally given us the most beautiful but most unreliable cars ever conceived. You’re thinking that I must have my brands mixed up surely?
Not at all. The tightly-packed production facility – as manufacturing plants go, this is quite a compact affair – has been Maserati’s home since 1940. Some of the buildings date back to the early days, but the factory underwent a refit in 1999 and a modernisation in 2001 under Fiat ownership (which took over the company in 1993).
In fact, with the massively ambitious production plans that Maserati has, most of its production has moved to Turin where the Quattroporte and Ghibli is made. The Modena facility still makes the Granturismo models and is more geared towards smaller more labour-intensive production runs.
And it’s to exploit the highly skilled, experienced and more hands-on production style of this plant that the low-volume and beautifully exotic Alfa Romeo 4C production has been allocated to a place emblazoned with the Trident badging.
However the 4C is put together like a racing car, so it’s quite fitting that it’s made in the same place that the fabled Maserati 250F one of the greatest race cars ever, was put together.
Watch the video on this page and you’ll see that like hyper-expensive exotica wearing Ferrari, Lamborghini and McLaren badges, the little 4C is primarily a monocoque carbon fibre tub book-ended by aluminium subframes. The 65kg tub is made elsewhere by Adler Plastic which also supplies some of the aforementioned.
At the factory assembly process starts with the front and rear bonded and bolted on, along with the roll-bar and then the body panels – themselves made of a lightweight carbon fibre glass. The 4C is 38% aluminium and 10% carbon fibre. Altogether in base guise it weights 895kg. Although bigger bumpers, A/C and different headlights take the weight closer to 1100kg – figure about halfway for our region then.
Once it starts to look like a 4C, it leaves the first room and is taken away for painting elsewhere. Once it’s back, the panels are stripped off again. You may wonder why not just paint the structure and panels separately and then attach them. Well because they want a consistency of colour and tone across each car, so they paint it together. The panels that get taken off a car, still with that car whilst the next part of the assembly is done.
This is where it gets its brakes, suspension (double wishbone at the front, MacPherson struts at the rear), engine and drivetain (a remarkably small engine and dual-clutch combo) along with the interior, the electronics, lights, brakes (lightweight Brembos) tyres (204/45 R17s front and 235/40 R18s on the rear – all Pirelli P Zeros) and everything else of course.
Watching the workers – over 200 working on the 4C, each with at least five years experience – attentively, carefully and methodically putting the 4C together, you sense an earnest effort to produce a stunning quality product. This Alfa is not being just ‘thrown together’ that’s for sure. It’s being hand-crafted, and considering the distinct lack of robots, that’s a rare truism these days.
Once they complete the process here, the car goes to a massive quality control area where they precisely measure panel gaps and paint finishes, check it on a rolling road and douse it with water to test for leaks, and then still take it for a quick road test before its ready for delivery to its oh-so-very luck owner.
The one thing that comes across more than anything is that this is a special car born in a hallowed place with a great deal of care, attention and yes, even, love. Admittedly they’re still in the process of getting production up and running and churning out the 1500 launch edition models. At full flow they’re expecting to produce up to 3500 cars per year, with a convertible Spider version joining soon (that’s the one I’d hold out for!).