Alfa Romeo 4C Hillclimb Monster Returns with Formula 3000 Engine

Alfa Romeo 4C race car gets new bodywork, and 450HP race engine.

Last fall, Italian YouTube autophile and audiophile (autiophile?) 19Bozzy92 posted video of the most bananas Alfa Romeo 4C. Now, that Alfa is back with a bit of refinement and Italian videographer Bozzy captured it again. For 2017, he’s revised not just the engine but also the bodywork. He still has a beastly Alfa on his hands but this one’s ready to rip with a real race motor.

Gone is the boosted four-cylinder and in its place has gone the 3.0-liter Zytek V8 from a Formula 3000 car. While that formula disappeared more than a decade ago, Zytek built dozens of engines for the various F3000 series. As a result, you can find these 450-horsepower race-bred engines with some digging. Gramenzi appears to have done just that. Judd Power acquired the rights to these engines, so it’s possible that he just bought one from them, too. They sell a lot of small V8s like this for hillclimbs.

Auto GP contained the last vestiges of F3000 and it vanished last year. With many teams formerly based in Italy, we imagine Gramenzi hit the local auctions or something of that nature. While 450 horsepower is less than the previous engine, we think he can probably use it a little more naturally, assuming he also nabbed a six-speed gearbox to go with it.

Since the car does carry Alfa Romeo badges, one must ask, “How does it sound?” Well, F3000 engines sound phenomenal and nobody captures better race car audio than 19Bozzy92. We’ll let you judge that with your own criteria, but we think this sounds like a proper Alfa. Bozzy caught it testing at the Verzegnis Hillclimb this year and we suspect Marco Gramenzi may not be done racing up hills this year.