For those of you who aren’t really familiar with car terminology, the Spider of this eponymous car means that it has no roof. Much like the rather famous Renault Spider in fact – a car that had massive power thanks to its incredibly low weight.

This car, from Alfa Romeo (the rather famous Italian car manufacturer known for creating cars that are incredibly driver-centric but also known for, well, having Italian passion and throwing a strop every now and then) is a little different.

Just like the coupe version, it is rather likely to sell out quickly. In fact, the ‘standard’ 8C (if you can ever call such an impressive, beautiful car that) sold out in just a few days. This is thanks to the unique styling (something like a real-life batmobile) and absolutely gorgeous curves.

Power is derived from the 4.7 litre V8 inside a steel chassis and clothed in carbon fibre. Unlike a lot of the newer models from Alfa, this will be a return to the old ‘Italian Passion’ form – i.e. we’ll see a wilful comeback of rear wheel drive. Again, for those in the know, this should provide bags of character and the option to swing the back end out in corners. Don’t bother driving it in the snow or wet.

A six-speed gearbox and a limited slip diff will round off the package with a rumoured 0-60 somewhere around 4.8 seconds. Unfortunately, there’ll be only 500 in the world. Even if you can’t buy one, this is a shame, as you’ll probably never see such a beautiful car on the road either. Prices will be in excess of £100,000 no doubt.

Look what you’ve done. You’ve only gone and devalued your car, increased your insurance premium, added weight to the vehicle and made it more difficult to sell in the future apart from to Barbary apes of your own breed. What am I talking about? Well, none other than car modifications!

There are a few modifications that I don’t actually mind too much – and those tend to be things that go on under the hood. I have a bit of respect for you if you know how to sort out your valve timings, a stainless steel exhaust and a sports induction kit from HKS. What I won’t tolerate though is your ‘uprating‘ (read destroying) a perfectly good car but adding all manner of ridiculous plastic gubbins and fat exhausts.

Over in the UK, we have the type of people known as ‘chavs’. You may or may not have heard of them, but they are either those who get a bad rap for nothing, or the lower rungs of society who like nothing better than to get boozed up, steal cars and laugh about it while rolling each other in supermarket trolleys afterwards.

Anyway, you’ll tend to find that it’s the chav community who like to do up their wheels, but not necessarily so. Let’s look at a very recent example of car modification that really annoyed me. Knowing that the new style of Subaru Impreza has been released (they’ve gone from the usual saloon to a rather iffy looking hatchback), I thought this would be a good time to get a new set of rather speedy wheels. So duly off I went to the local used dealership to see what I can find.

I’ll grant you, in this case I was maybe asking a bit much – a car that wasn’t too old, not too many miles and it had to be UNMODIFIED. The reason that I specify that is that the Subaru Impreza is a powerful machine, well the WRX is anyway, and the STI variants. They are the models that you frequently see racing in the world rallying stages etc. I wanted one that was unmodified so I could have the pure Subaru experience – a car to be driven as intended.

Anyway, when I got to the dealership, I actually found a model I quite liked. I don’t normally go for anything too flashy, but this was in two colours. Nice. A bit like a car I made in Forza Motorsport 2 on the Xbox 360 actually. So, I took a look all the way around it. Non-standard alloys – okay, I could live with that. Fat exhaust – maybe I couldn’t live with that if the volume was too much. Ridiculous flared arches and rear spoiler (along with stickers and various other rubbish) – this I could not live with.

A genuinely good-looking car had been wrecked by someone deciding that not only could the car do with engine mods (so you would be looking at less than 15MPG) but also a whole new bodykit. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen some good-looking modifications to cars – but these tend to be few and far between. What I think people fail to realise is that years of work has gone into building these machines – not just another 10 kilos of fibreglass.

The next time you’re looking at tinted windows, think about whether they are really going to benefit you. As for those larger alloys – well okay, you might sit on the road a little better, but bear in mind that the ride quality may suffer. Do you want the fat exhaust? Well please pick up the hospital bill for the poor dear who you give the next heart attack to…

On another note, I haven’t yet got my Subaru (or Scooby as some call them). I was put off recently by an experience when I was driving back home quite late. There was a total of three lanes and some idiot came screaming up the left lane (the slower one) and shot past and off into the night. He was driving a Subaru Impreza STI – all 300BHP and no common sense I think.

Generally speaking, racing (and sports performance) cars tend to be noted for a couple of things, including being extremely thirsty. The other thing is that very rarely do they deviate from the super version of standard petrol. Sure, some of them will now run on a certain percentage of ethanol, but hardly enough to write home about when they return about fifteen miles per gallon.

With this in mind, it’s pretty amazing that two hugely influential vehicle manufacturers (amongst others mind you) have stepped out from the shadows with two very important cars. They are the Audi R8 and the Mitsubishi Concept-RA. These cars are important because they’re both extremely quick, whilst diesel engines of old had problems in the low and high rev range, were noisy and cumbersome (though did provide a lot more torque).

So, let’s take a look at the Audi R8. Whilst the original has been out some time, the R8 shown here is the TDI version, powered by a mighty V12. This 6.0 litre powerhouse is actually faster than the petrol version, offering up 493 BHP and 1,000N/m of torque. This allows it to sprint from 0-62 in only 4.2 seconds – 0.4 seconds faster than the petrol.

Amazingly, the TDI version of the R8 actually shoves out less emissions than its’ petrol brethren, injecting a urea-based solution called AdBlue into the system to cut nitrous oxide output.

The car is expected to be available from showrooms the world over in 2009 – however if it’s anything like the original R8 it’ll sell out rather fast indeed. If I were you I’d get my order in as quick as possible…

The other turbodiesel I’m interested in is the Mitsubishi Concept-RA. Shown recently at the Detroit Motor Show – it’s clear that the company known for the manic Evo (of all variations) is not pulling any punches with this extremely aggressive looking concept.

The RA has all the lines of a sports coupe, with powerful lines and huge 21 inch wheels housed in huge arches and fenders. In terms of how it looks, there’s an exposed engine cover to show off the beast underneath, whilst the front-end looks supremely futuristic.

The car features a new Super All Wheel Control driveline that has the usual Active Steering, Suspension and braking controls. Going to the engine, there’s a 2.2 litre, 4-cylinder, 16 valve common rail turbo diesel. It features a maximum output of 201 horsepower and 310N/m of torque.

No doubt when this car comes into production (we’ve seen concepts like this come to light before) we’ll see even more power. Mitsubishi has long been known for driving sports saloons of the future, and I’m sure this will be no exception.

Judging by the way things are going, I’ll not be surprised at all if most cars on the road of the future end up being diesel, gas or some other alternative fuel. As engines get better and better, there’ll be less need to rely on petrol engines or indeed the pollutants they produce.