Alfa Romeo Spider S4
ALFA ROMEO SPIDER S4
While Ford was subjecting the Jaguar XJ-S to a reliability-led makeover in Coventry, Fiat was doing the exact-same thing to the Alfa Romeo Spider in Milan, only its subject was 24 years old and had had even more time to make its faults known, rust notoriously being chief among them. Only because of its experience with the Type Four joint project with Saab, the Fiat Group now had knowledge of the best rust protection techniques in the business. The resulting S4 was a neat restyle that replaced the S3’s bolted-on bodykit – drilled through sills and valances – with neater bumpers, sill covers and light clusters. It offers elegant Sixties motoring with Nineties-built solidity. Its galvanised coachwork also concealed plastic wheelarch liners and extensive cavity wax injection. The 2.0-litre engine’s troublesome SPICA fuel-injection of old was replaced with Bosch Motronic ML4.1.
Admittedly, its once-class-leading galvanisation and undersealing does break down with age, though S4s don’t rot in the scattergun manner of their predecessors. The floors underneath the footwells tend to break down first, although if this is spotted early on it can often be sorted with a patch-weld. Lift up the carpets when inspecting one.
Elsewhere though, the Spider S4 is a fundamentally simple, reliable car with little to go wrong and all parts - including interior trim - easily and cheaply available from the likes of Classic Alfa. Body panels have been put back into production recently, using Pininfarina’s original tooling, so everything’s available, cheap and easily fitted. Just be aware that the three-piece sills cost £300 per side, and another £300 each to fit.
Prices start at £5k for a scruffy runner, rising to £15k for a mint example, but specification strongly affects desirability. Right-handdrive models are conversions, so make sure it was an official agent like Bell & Colville or Seaking that carried it out. The base-model left-handdrive Weber-carburetted 1.6-litre with plastic hubcaps wasn’t officially sold in the UK, but can make for a bargain if you’re not bothered about its lowly specification. It might be tough to sell it on in future though.