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"Alfa Romeo divorced itself from the US so long ago that we now only remember the sweet moments, not the overwhelmingly bitter reasons for the marque&amp;#039;s departure. Twenty years have passed since the last 164 sedan found a home, yet there remains a massive fondness for the brand in North America. Faint memories of Autodelta&amp;#039;s GTA winning the inaugural SCCA Trans-Am championship in 1966 and Dustin Hoffman&amp;#039;s Spider from The Graduate have helped us forget that Alfa&amp;#039;s cars were crap when it finally packed up and left. Even in Europe in the years since, the marque has only occasionally been class-competitive. But it was Alfa that invented the modern sport sedan, back when BMW was still messing with bubble cars. It was Alfa that pushed aluminum dual-overhead-cam engines into the hands of masses more used to iron-block boat anchors. It was Alfa that pioneered variable valve timing and built family cars with a rear transaxle, because guys with kids appreciate perfect weight distribution too. In 2008, the pretty but flawed 8C coupe whetted our appetite for Alfa Romeo&amp;#039;s return, but only now, having steadied the ship at home in Europe, is Alfa plotting a full-scale assault on the US. That return will encompass a Giulia sedan and possibly a baby Spider roadster, modern interpretations of the cars we loved the first time around. But spearheading the move is the incomprehensibly sexy 4C, scheduled to arrive this summer. WATCH: Chris Harris flog the Alfa Romeo 4C and Porsche Cayman  Almost as wide as it is long and 157 inches from tip to tail, it measures 6.4 inches longer than a Lotus Elise. The Maserati-built Quattro-Ci is every bit the consummate modern sports car. Instead of the expected V6, there&amp;#039;s a very contemporary 1.7-liter turbocharged four behind your head. Instead of the expected aluminum structure, the whole car is built around a carbon-fiber tub and clothed in SMC composite, resulting in a claimed curb weight of less than 2200 lbs for the European version tested here. Even among the ranks of $300,000 supercars, a carbon chassis is rare. But the Alfa will cost about $54,000 when the federalized version arrives in the US this year. That puts the car squarely in the path of Porsche&amp;#039;s sublime Cayman, enjoyed best in S guise, which swaps the $53,595 base car&amp;#039;s 2.7 for the 3.4-liter six from the base 911 Carrera. S trim bumps the price to $64,795, and that&amp;#039;s before the inevitable visit to the options list for goodies like our test car&amp;#039;s $3200 PDK dual-clutch transmission. Which makes it significantly more expensive than the third car in our trio, the Lotus Elise. Sadly, the Brit is no longer on sale in the US since an airbag exemption expired, but we&amp;#039;ve included it here because you can still root out a low-mileage, approved Elise from a Lotus dealer; because its four-cylinder powerplant and low weight make it a great fit; and because it&amp;#039;s still just about the purest sports car there is.  From the moment you open the 4C&amp;#039;s tiny door, it&amp;#039;s clear that the Alfa is trying to emulate the purity of the Lotus, not the opulence of the Porsche. Alfa sees that carbon chassis as a unique selling proposition and is keen to shout about it, so glossy woven fibers beam back from an interior whose carpeting is limited to a couple of rugs. Getting in isn&amp;#039;t too difficult, but the vestigial seat padding and spartan feel is a surprise. The organic shape of the dash feels modern and envelops the driver, but the plastics are woeful. The rotary heating controls are particularly bad, moving the cables with the slop and imprecision of a 1970s AMC. The 4C&amp;#039;s fat, oddly squared-off steering wheel has just two spokes and looks like twin cobras canoodling in a Lunchables container. Beyond it lies an overly busy screen, which remains blank until you turn the key. Yes, a real key. How gloriously retro. When the screen wakes up, so does everyone else; our test car is fitted with the optional sport exhaust system, whose only silencing devices are the turbocharger and catalytic converter. You read that right: no muffler. The engine making that racket is fed with direct injection and almost 22 psi of boost. It delivers 237 hp through a mandatory six-speed dual-clutch transmission to the back wheels, and it sends vibrations through the bulkhead to your spine. The 4C sounds raw, urgent, and angry, and that&amp;#039;s how it performs.  Shorn of air-conditioning and radio, fitted with a passenger seat that is bolted fast to the floor, and without the extra airbags and crash reinforcement that US cars get, basic European-spec 4Cs are claimed to weigh only 2028 lbs. Suddenly 237 hp doesn&amp;#039;t sound quite so sad. Engage launch control, mash the right pedal and sidestep the left, and with barely a squeak from the 235/35R-19 Pirelli P Zeros, the 4C leaps off the line. 4.2 seconds later, in a barrage of industrial sound effects, from turbo whoosh to wastegate chuffs and a boomy exhaust howl, the 4C reaches 60 mph. If rear visibility weren&amp;#039;t so appalling, you&amp;#039;d see most cars receding into the distance. Switching gears in the 4C involves merely brushing the paddles fixed to the back of the steering wheel. Fair enough; plenty of guys like playing F1. But did Alfa really have to imbue them with all the tactility of a dollar-store toy? The transmission itself, a transverse-mounted, dry-clutch Fiat-developed unit (it&amp;#039;s shared with the Dodge Dart), is much improved over the clunky Alfa dual-clutch shifters of a few years ago. Upshifts are rapid and purposeful, provided you&amp;#039;ve selected the sporty transmission map by pushing the cheap-feeling &amp;quot;DNA&amp;quot; cockpit switch to Dynamic, which also tightens the otherwise flabby throttle response. On a smooth surface, the 4C absolutely fizzes with energy. The steering, surprisingly weighty at parking speeds, lightens appreciably, barking orders at the optional 18-inch front wheels (17s are standard, the rears an inch bigger in each case). There&amp;#039;s never quite that ultimate clarity of feedback, but on smooth pavement, the 4C darts from apex to apex with precision and enthusiasm. SPY PHOTOS: Hardcore Porsche Cayman GT4  Then you get to real-world roads\u2014broken pavement, camber, truck grooves\u2014and it starts to fall apart. We should make it clear that our car was fitted with the optional Racing pack, intended for track use. It had uprated springs and shocks, a stiffer front sway bar, and the addition of a rear bar where the standard car has none. US cars will get their own suspension setup, with its springs, shocks, and bars different from the Euro versions. On anything less than marble-smooth flooring, the steering is so messed up, it feels like you&amp;#039;re walking a pack of dogs through a butcher shop. Bumps upset it, ruts in the road are like magnets, and you start backing off the power when other cars approach on twisty back roads, because you don&amp;#039;t feel confident that you&amp;#039;re not about to leap across the center line and punt them into the scenery. Even simply changing lanes on a rough stretch of freeway sends the front wheels into a frenzy. Road Test Editor Robin Warner actually checked for broken bushings on the track control arms. We know that Alfa is already considering updating the 4C with power-assisted steering, which would be a shame. Because it&amp;#039;s not the weight that&amp;#039;s the problem, but the corruption. The interference dilutes the steering feel and, consequently, your enjoyment of the car. At an indicated 150 mph on a badly surfaced airfield, when the busy-feeling Lotus never wavered from its course, the Alfa felt downright scary.  But the strangest thing is that the 4C isn&amp;#039;t really scary at all. Push harder in the dry, and you&amp;#039;ll find only gentle front-end washout. The back tires remain locked to the pavement. Climb hard on the gas in the wet, preferably after a big lift or by diving in on the brakes, and you can set the tail free. But the tardy throttle response makes it all feel inexact, and you get the impression that Alfa doesn&amp;#039;t put store in the delicate throttle adjustability espoused by the Porsche, which shrugs off its extra pounds as if they were 50, not 1000. Oh, the irony. Somewhere in Porsche&amp;#039;s Weissach R&amp;amp;amp;D headquarters, there&amp;#039;s an engineer reading this with a grin plastered to his face. The poor man has had to listen to us grouse about degradation in steering feel after Porsche&amp;#039;s switch to electrical assistance. But after a session in the Alfa, the overdamped responses of the Cayman feel strangely welcome. Climbing aboard the Cayman after any time in the others feels like settling into the leather couch of a presidential limo. The doors open wide for easy access; the ample seat cushioning cossets your bruised behind. It&amp;#039;s quiet and beautifully built. If Porsche told us the Cayman was twice the price of the 4C, we&amp;#039;d believe it.  Compared with the Alfa&amp;#039;s tiny, fat two-spoker, the Cayman&amp;#039;s steering wheel is so huge you feel like Leonardo da Vinci&amp;#039;s Vitruvian Man when you reach out to grasp it at nine and three (the artist also suggests ten and two as an alternative, but we disagree). Extraneous sensations like nudges and jiggles may be absent, but the Cayman always feels incisive, and there is some feel there to let you know when the front tires are about to throw in the towel. They rarely do, even with over 300 hp pushing at them. Yes, downsizing is good for the planet and our fuel bils, and it&amp;#039;s more cost-effective for the Alfa to share an engine with the humble Giulietta hatchback rather than build one from scratch. But I&amp;#039;ll happily shoulder a measure of environmental guilt in exchange for the chance to wring the Cayman&amp;#039;s flat-six to its 7800 rpm redline every day. The Porsche comfortably asserts its superiority in a straight line, its 325 hp and 272 lb-ft more than a match for both its rivals and its own 3083 lbs. Dial up the launch control that comes with the optional Sport Chrono pack and the PDK dual-clutch &amp;#039;box, and four seconds later, you&amp;#039;ll be at 60 mph, 0.4 second ahead of the six-speed-manual alternative. FIND OUT WHY: The Lamborghini Huracan LP610-4 should be scarier  But it&amp;#039;s not merely the kick in the back that makes working the Cayman&amp;#039;s engine so satisfying. No, it&amp;#039;s the noise, a cultured yawp to the four-banger&amp;#039;s thrashy wail. It&amp;#039;s the response. In the naturally aspirated Porsche, that response is instant, and in a manner that a forced-induction engine can&amp;#039;t hope to offer. When you call for power in the Alfa, there&amp;#039;s a wait while the pressure builds, before all hell breaks loose. In the Porsche, it&amp;#039;s there the moment you tread on the pedal, ready to be meted out one pony at a time. Of the three cars, only the Porsche gives you the choice between two and three pedals. I&amp;#039;ll be driving manual-shift cars until gout results in amputation, but whatever your stance on the debate, the truth is that Porsche&amp;#039;s PDK is as good as they come. Compared with the Alfa&amp;#039;s tranny, the PDK feels far more responsive going up the gears, far quicker on the way down. And it has a much better automatic mode for people who would rather be driving a Honda Accord. The Porsche even has two trunks. Few real sports cars demand so little compromise from their owners.  Certainly not the Elise. If Lotus pared the content back any further, the car would be see-through. Your first impressions from the driving seat inevitably center on just how bare the cockpit feels. Exposed sections of the clever bonded and riveted aluminum structure create a cold, mechanical ambience that&amp;#039;s only heightened when you twist the key and the strains\u2014that&amp;#039;s the only word for them\u2014of the supercharged four-cylinder motor come through that rear firewall. The Lotus&amp;#039;s 1.8-liter Toyota-derived engine employs a Magnuson R900 supercharger to deliver 217 hp, 184 lb-ft, and a radically different character from the turbocharged 4C. Where the Alfa is unashamedly boost-driven, waking up sharply when the turbo comes up to speed above 2500 rpm and maintaining that push in the back to around 5500, the Lotus is more playful. It wants you to think it has a big, naturally aspirated engine, wants you to work a bit harder for your fun. While the 4C&amp;#039;s torque is on hand from just 2200 rpm, the Lotus serves it up only when you&amp;#039;ve offered 4600 rpm on the barely legible tach. That shortfall doesn&amp;#039;t matter. The Lotus never feels wanting, despite its 4.8-second 60-mph sprint lagging more than half a second behind the others&amp;#039;. Why? Because you&amp;#039;re always a key player in the effort to turn that view out front into a speck in the rear. The sole transmission is a properly mechanical-feeling six-speed manual. Pay attention or you&amp;#039;ll wrong-slot it. Get it right and you&amp;#039;ll grin like no two-pedal driver can.  And then there&amp;#039;s the steering. Nothing reminds us of what we as drivers have left behind in the digital age better than the unfiltered messages coursing their way to your fingers from the Lotus&amp;#039;s tiny, 175-section front tires. It&amp;#039;s a master class, delivering so much pure, unfiltered communication that there ought to be a cabinet in the Smithsonian sporting a three-spoke Lotus wheel, simply to remind future generations what it was like to eavesdrop on every tread block&amp;#039;s most intimate liaisons with the road. Is that connection enough to swing the vote in the Elise&amp;#039;s favor, and against a car as visually seductive as the 4C? We&amp;#039;ve tried hard to steer clear of discussing style, because it is such a subjective matter. But come on\u2014who are we kidding? The Alfa looks sensational, like a Rio carnival dancer spilling out of her costume. It&amp;#039;s the center of attention wherever it goes. Even those ugly projector headlamps don&amp;#039;t look too bad, at least not with the pricey optional carbon covers. And judging from the 4C Spider that appeared at the Geneva show this March, it looks like the original concept&amp;#039;s lamps may yet be reinstated. This is a stunning machine, and Alfa&amp;#039;s marketing team knows it will sell every one of the 4Cs bound for the US this year. Should you be one of those people waving a checkbook? If you want the most beautiful, the most topical, the most technically interesting new sports car available in the United States, then by all means, go for it. Nothing this side of a full-blown exotic will swivel heads like the 4C. READ: The Z/28, resurrected  But\u2014while we must be mindful that federalized cars with US suspension tuning might perform differently\u2014judging by our experience with this European-spec car, the 4C might be leaning hard on those looks. Its drivetrain just doesn&amp;#039;t feel or sound special enough for a $54,000 car; likewise the interior quality. Sure, you&amp;#039;re meant to be focused on the dynamics, not assessing the moldings on the dash top, but Porsche has proved style and substance can live cheek by jowl. You could forgive the engine, forgive the interior, if the Alfa&amp;#039;s dynamic performance made all that unimportant. But it doesn&amp;#039;t. Sorry to spoil the homecoming party, but if you want the purest of purist&amp;#039;s sports cars, you need to hunt down a lightly used Elise. The Lotus&amp;#039;s bones might be nearly 20 years old, but the car still gives Alfa&amp;#039;s glamorous newcomer and its fancy carbon chassis a swift lesson in what matters. Who cares if you&amp;#039;re sitting in a composite wicker basket if the steering isn&amp;#039;t up to scratch? Where does that leave the Porsche? Early in this test, it became clear that, despite price and blueprint, the 4C and Cayman aren&amp;#039;t rivals at all. One is an automotive EpiPen, a five-minute shot of thrash metal to wake you from the somnambulance of modern-day driving. Its luster would fade with the drag of daily use. The other is one of the most complete sports cars on the planet. More reserved, yes. Less superficially exciting, certainly. But the Cayman has a depth of character few cars at this price level can match.  Performance Tests    "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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