Anticipazione

The Alfa We’ve Been Waiting for Is Great. Will That Be Good Enough?

- Max Prince

YOU DRIVE SOMETHING BUILT IN A place called Piedmonte San Germano, a machine Internet-famous for twice setting Nürburgring lap records, a car that makes noises like a ripping trombone from hell and has a legion of Roman cavalry under the hood, that swims in flamboyant red-metallic paint, and you expect to get some attention. Not the Who stampede, necessarily. But gas-station curiosity, a nod, a thumbs-up, a sardonic “That thing got a Hemi?” stoplight exchange. I spent an entire day bombing around Northern California, then lapping Sonoma Raceway, in an Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio, one of the first examples off the boat. We covered a fair distance. We might’ve even done a burnout or seven. And we got nothing. Nada. Nobody seemed to notice.

Maybe Napa Valley was the wrong crowd. Or maybe they’d forgotten what an Alfa Romeo looks like. After all, the company hasn’t sold a four-door here since 1995, when it discontinued the front-drive 164. The all-new Giulia represents Alfa Romeo’s return to our market en masse, a crucial proposition for a storied badge struggling to justify its continued existence. On these pages is the Quadrifoglio variant, the rear-drive Italian super sedan we’ve been waiting decades for, a halo car to make believers of the heretic sand disillusioned. If it’s a turd, the brand, at least as a purveyor of enthusiast vehicles, is probably sunk.