DRIVEN: Have The Italians Outclassed The Iconic Miata With The Fiat 124 Spider?

It still needs a horsepower option higher than 165.

The article lumps the Miata and GT86 together as birds of a feather. Yes both are stupidly underpowered, but when it comes to handling, there is a huge difference.

At the track, the GT86 begins to lose grip the minute you turn into a curve and it starts sliding. That may be "like totally awesome" for the idiot import tuner boys who imagine themselves as drifting kings, but it is NOT the fastest way through a corner.

The Miata on the other hand is as neutral as it can possibly be and only a ham-fisted idiot can get oversteer out of it. The problem is that the Miata's engine has no grunt to push the handling. That car is capable of handling double the base horsepower in my opinion. Offering that option would probably double the Miata's sales.

So now the Fiata...

The 1.4T may produce the right numbers, but it suffers from turbo lag that other manufacturers tuned out two decades ago. Bottom end grunt is sorely lacking. At the high end it huffs and puffs. It's fine for the 500 Abarth. It's a total mess in the Dart because of the weight, so the Fiata will be somewhere in between.

It would not surprise me in the least if the Miata's engine is by far the easier to live with day to day and the one you want at the track.

As for the Fiata, why not use the Alfa 4C's engine????

Actually the 1.4 engine is not that laggy. Yes you have to slip the clutch a little in stop and go but above 2500 RPM and at higher altitude it will run away from a Miata. On the base model and the Lusso it is a more relaxed engine. This is the kind of car that will appeal to older folks who don't want a car that is as hard core as a Miata or the Abarth version which is ore hard core. In day to day driving it is probably a bit more comfortable and easier to live with.It also has less bosy roll in corners. I think it is going to have actually a greater appeal(especially in the Lusso trim). I could see a Lusso with it's nice leather and auto appealing to secretary's and the like. However if you want more sports car you can get the Abarth with all the available Mopar accessories for it that apparently have already been developed for it. Further being that this car has the 1.4 multiair turbo from the 500 Abarth the amount of power goodies for this engine are mind boggling. You can get 230 plus horsepower out of this thing with virtually eliminated turbo lag. That turn s this car into Japanese/Italian Honda S2000. I guess what I am saying is that this car is going to be a lot more multidimensional than a Miata.

(1) The Miata is soft core at best. (2) when you put all that Mopar import tuner boy crap on the engine you most definitely will compromise tractability, and quite likely durability too.

Moreover, why should I as a customer have to do to the car what FCA should have done in the first place? That makes no sense.

If you have to rev it to 2500rpm for a basic street launch, it most decidedly is a laggy engine.

Using the 4C's engine as the base would have been the way to go. The Miata already has the secretary, nail girl, hair dresser, and old-man-in-a-retirement-village segments covered.

This could have been a winner for FCA, but I predict another trickle/failure for sales like the Miata.

Put 4C engine in limited edition "coupe" version and see them sell out. It's not going to be a high volume seller (two seaters are never volume leaders, even the S2000 was only beloved by a small population). The Miata is the standard by which all two seaters hope to match in terms of sales numbers.

And putting the 4C engine in it would have made it a mid 30's sportscar in cost. Also the 4C engine only comes in the dual clutch.