Alfa Romeo has told CAR Magazine the new Alfa Romeo Spider will not be based on an MX-5 as originally planned, but that a Abarth variant of the Mazda roadster is more likely.
BACK IN 2012, Fiat and Mazda announced they would work on ‘brand specific, lightweight roadsters’ with an Alfa Romeo Spider being based on the 2015 Mazda MX-5 and built at Mazda’s Hiroshima factory. Well, now, in an interview in CAR Magazine, Alfa Romeo boss, Harald Wester said the Alfa Spider would no longer be based on an MX-5 platform but would be a derivative of the brand’s Project Giorgio.
What’s Project Giorgio? In a nutshell, it’s Alf Romeo’s new rear-wheel drive architecture which will underpin, most importantly, the Alfa Romeo Giulia 159 replacement. “As far as the Spider goes, the final version is of course no longer the two-seater FCA [Fiat Chrysler Automobiles – the company recently announced it would be known only as FCA] codeveloped with Mazda but a derivative of Project Giorgio,” Wester told CAR Magazine.
That doesn’t mean the relationship is dead, and Wester said: “The Far East import will probably find a new home with Fiat-Abarth”. And that’s perhaps an even more exciting prospect.
