Pogea Racing has taken the Alfa Romeo 4C and created something incredible.
If you haven’t heard of the Alfa Romeo 4C, that’s likely to do with the fact that Alfa Romeo as a brand has only been sold in North America since 2014 and only shipped 800 of the cars over from Italy. Also, North America doesn’t seem to really care about sports cars unless they’ve got over 500 horsepower.
The 4C is certainly no slouch, managing to encourage a tiny 1.75-L turbocharged inline 4-cylinder engine to produce 237 ponies and 258 lb-ft of torque. On a car that only weighs 2,315 lbs, that’s enough to let it scoot around corners and reach a top speed of 160 mph. Zero to sixty is done in 4.5 seconds, so the 4C can accelerate with the best of them.
But again, nobody cares about a sports car with a reasonable amount of power that handles well. They want a ludicrously powerful sports car that is actively trying to kill an untrained driver.
Pogea Racing heard this call and delivered what people really wanted out of a sports car. The German tuning house took the 4C, threw away all semblance of sanity, and created something truly wonderful.
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If there’s one thing that Alfa Romeo can do, it’s create a gorgeous looking car. Pogea didn’t mess with the overall look of the 4C, only adding some vents and a larger rear wing to convince the uninformed that this car means business. They also took the already super-efficient 1.75-L four-banger and bored it out so it now displaces 1.95-L. They also added a bigger turbocharger, strengthened the entire drivetrain, added a performance exhaust, and larger intakes.
The end result is a tiny sports car that now produces supercar levels of power.
That tiny engine now produces 477 hp along with 395 lb-ft torque. Weight is kept neutral by replacing the hood with a carbon fiber version and replacing the wheels with lighter forged alloy versions. This nearly doubles the 4C’s power-to-weight ratio, turning the small sports car into a veritable rocket.
They call it the Nemesis. Pogea racing will only build five of these bespoke supercars, and while pricing hasn’t been announced you can bet they'll be more expensive than the usual $50,000 price of a regular 4C.