- Alfa Romeo is one of the greatest brands in automotive history, and has plans to remain among the greatest for a long time.
- As Alfa and the world transition to electric power, first with hybrids, then BEVs, the company will maintain its sporty heritage across all models.
- Those quality problems? They're getting better.
If you tally it all up it doesn’t take long to realize Alfa Romeo is one of the greatest names in racing—and one of the greatest names in street cars, too. Historically speaking Alfa has really done it all: five world championships between 1925 and 1977, four Le Mans victories, 17 European Touring Car titles, and 10 Targa Florio and 11 Mille Miglia wins. When Enzo Ferrari wanted to try his hand at racing, before there was a Ferrari race team, he drove for and later managed the Alfa Romeo team, which included no less a talent than Tazio Nuvolari.
Alfa Romeo was founded in Milan in 1910 as “Anonima Lombardo Fabbrica Automobili,” and even you would rather just say Alfa. The “Romeo” was added after a savior of the same name ran the company for a while. One year after its founding, Alfa went racing, first in the Targa Florio, then the Mille Miglia and, of course, in Grand Prix. It won everywhere.
That racing rubbed off on the production cars. Along the way there were cars so memorable and sought-after that they set records at auctions even today: Consider the fast and efficient 6C of the 1920s and ‘30s, in many different engine displacements, as both a road car and a race car; the powerful 8C 2300 that roared across Italy and around the world from 1931 to ’39; the post-war beautiful and attainable Giuliettas that drew sports car lovers from all over the world as much for the car’s looks as its delightfully communicative tossability—on the market in one form or another from 1954 to ’62; the wonderfully squared-off Giulia that spawned five production variants and two race cars from 1962 to 1965; the achingly gorgeous 33 Stradale that was as beautiful as any Ferrari but lingered in anonymity for years because of its rarity; the very ‘70s Montreal; and just about anything from the factory through any time in Alfa’s history (OK not the Alfasud and the Alfetta). All are loved by a dedicated core of enthusiasts. What draws them to the marque?
Alfa Romeo Concorso Reminds Us Why We Love These Cars
“Well, usually they're cheap,” said Alfa Romeo Owners Club co-president (with wife Elyse) Jim Barrett, speaking at the club’s annual convention, held this year in Coronado, California, across the bay from San Diego. “Hence, we call them Always Looking For Another. But that's not entirely true. What we've got are some great-looking cars that are fun to drive, they're comfortable, they're stylish, they're in a class by themselves, in my humble opinion, and if you look at the diversity here, for a company that has been around for 112 years, they’ve built a lot of great cars.”
Indeed, the Alfiesti Coronado offered a couple hundred Alfas from much of the marque’s storied history: Giulias, Giuliettas, 2000s, Sprint Speciales, and beautiful rarities like Ken Roath's 1957 1900 CSS Zagato and Jonathan Segal's immaculate TZ1.
"As far as all the cars I own—and I've got 13 of them—that's the one I like to drive," said Segal of his TZ1. "I've got a '73 RS Porsche and it's pedestrian compared to that. Even though the Porsche may be a better car, I don't know, that car (pointing to the TZ) is way more fun to drive. It sounds like a Formula One car."
More modern Alfas have been no less inspiring: the new 8C Competizione came to the US in very small numbers from 2007 to 2009 as a kind of feeler for Alfa’s re-entry into the US market; the dinky and delirious 4C coupe and spider were as fabulous to drive as they were difficult to get in or out of; and now we have the Stelvio crossover utility vehicle (because the world wants crossovers and Alfa wants to stay in business); the slightly smaller crossover Tonale (because maybe the world wants choices in its essential SUVs); and the incredibly fun-to-drive and yet still quite practical Giulia sedan, available in seven trim levels from the fairly reasonable “Giulia” on up to the you-really-need-this Quadrifoglio.
Let’s digress: A few years ago, when Alfa Romeo had officially returned to the US market after having left it in the mid-90s because of what market analysts call “quality issues” and “low sales,” I got to spend a fantastic day swapping Giulias with a driving colleague on some of the best roads Southern California has to offer. He had to write a marketing piece on the cars, and he needed someone to drive whatever of the two cars he wasn’t driving. Plus, he didn’t know where the best roads were in Southern California.
I did.
So there we were, ripping across some of the greatest mountain and hill country SoCal has to offer on a completely uncrowded weekday with no one else around except the occasional suicidal squirrel (RIP). We had one 280-hp, AWD 2.0-liter four-cylinder Giulia Ti, and one 2.9-liter, twin-turbo V6-powered Giulia Quadrifoglio, all day, great roads, sunglasses, and two full tanks of gas with more where that came from. Hit it!
“There’s a jack-hammer pounding away in my chest,” my colleague later wrote. “Every nerve-ending feels like it’s channeling 10,000 volts to each fingertip. Beads of sweat are slowly seeping from every pore. Yet none of these bodily afflictions compare to the ache of the mile-wide grin of ecstasy running from ear to ear.”
Those were the days of breathless prose. And yet, he was right. Even in this unrealistically fantastic job of mine, that day stood out, not just because of the great cars on those great, empty roads—well, OK, yeah, because of the great cars on great, empty roads. Encapsulated in that day’s drive was the modern culmination of over 100 years of Alfa Romeo history. We are the sum of the giants upon whose shoulders we now get to stand, to mangle an analogy. If you turned around and looked far enough back you could imagine even Enzo Ferrari with a similar slobbering grin when he drove in the Targa Florio in 1921. Or the same look on the grille of Tazio Nuvolari. Because an Alfa Romeo is and always was a special thing.
And if current management is to be believed, Alfa will remain a special and wonderful thing.
“(Alfa CEO) Jean-Phillippe Imparato called me and said, ‘Would you consider running Alfa Romeo in America,” said auto industry exec Larry Dominique, who at the time of the asking was living in Paris and writing business-school-style analyses on Peugeot. “I said, 'Hell yeah.'”
Dominique is now senior vice president of Alfa Romeo in North America. He is well aware of the history and character of the brand and knows he can’t dumb it down or screw it up. Even as the brand adds crossover utility vehicles, he and his colleagues in Italy know they have to make it compatible with the history and character that customers know and love. Even the C-segment Tonale crossover was worked on by engineers from Alfa’s Formula 1 team, Dominique assures the faithful. The ute will get a surprisingly quick 13.6 steering ratio and dual-mode shock absorbers among its sporty credentials. Because you want to spread that DNA around, even as the world changes from internal combustion to electric, and from an AM radio—or no radio at all—to satellite radio and streaming services.
“The way we think of it is, this is not about building a car around an iPad,” said Dominique. “This is about making sure that all the embedded technology we have in Alfa Romeos supports the driver and supports the driving experience.”
You can imbue any Alfa with that certain Alfa Romeo feel. Last week I drove a Stelvio Veloce AWD with that same 280-hp, turbocharged four-cylinder used in the Giulia sedan I drove a few years ago and it was still a blast, albeit by crossover utility standards. If you have to get a crossover, you'll enjoy an Alfa.
“It’s about reinventing Italian sportiness for the 21st century,” Dominique said. “It's bringing all that core 112-year history that we have into the future.”
That future will be electric, first in the form of hybrids, then as all-electric BEVs. Look for a PHEV version of the Tonale in 2024, followed by hybrids and BEVs across the board in 2025, and all-electrics all the time in 2027, according to Alfa global CEO Imparato.
More specifically, look for an all-electric Stelvio in 2025. There will be a total of “five or six all-new Alfa Romeos in the next seven years,” Dominique said, which will include the sedans and coupes Alfisti have always loved and might start buying again.
Dominique cited several examples of Alfa DNA in his recent drive of the Tonale:
“The way we look at the future platforms is, obviously, Stelvio and Giulia sit on the Giorgio platform today. The Tonale is based on an ex-Fiat Chrysler platform which is shared with some other vehicles. It's built in Pomigliano, Italy. But what's interesting is, we did a lot of things on this platform: We lengthened the wheelbase, widened the track, we actually had our F1 development team working on the suspension of this vehicle. For example, when you go to the plug-in hybrid version of this, you not only have MacPherson struts all the way around, you have frequency selective damping on all four corners. So when you drive this thing, you would never believe it’s shared with any other product on the Stellantis platforms. I think the way the engineers are designing the platforms now, there's enough flexibility, wheelbases, track lengths, suspension geometry, and you still get to share those center core components of the core structure: battery layout, steering layout. For example, this is the only vehicle on this platform that has brake-by-wire—we save 10 pounds by going brake-by-wire in this vehicle. We have a 13.6 steering ratio, that's the only vehicle in this platform that has anywhere close to 13.6.
“When I look at the way we're developing, designing the throttle, the feel, the throttle travel, the throttle efforts, the steering on-center, off-center efforts, the re-centering of the steering, the linearity or the weight when they had to brake tuning—Alfa, Alfa, Alfa.”
And the future of Alfa sedans?
“Jean-Phillipe has already gone on record and said that the next-generation Giulia will still be a D sedan. And it's still going to be our flagship sedan. Now, what it means to be a sedan is evolving, right? We know that. But a low-slung, low-H point kind of performance sedan is still in our DNA. As we think about the future, we're asking ourselves, ‘What does it mean?’ You know, if we've talked about the six vehicles we're gonna launch over the next seven years, just by covering C segment, D SUV, D sedan, and maybe E segment vehicles, you're covering 85% of the premium market.”
The future of Alfa could even include some of your favorites from the past. How does Alfa keep that DNA pure? What's the next 4C? Do you resurrect Duetto? Do you bring in cabriolets?
"We're exploring all these concepts and ideas, because we always want to keep the brand fresh, both from special editions and limited models. And also, if you think about the 4C, that was a modest volume but it's a true halo vehicle for the brand. I just looked at the used car values for 4Cs right now, and they're way over index compared to even used car market in general.”
So we’ll see a lot of interesting stuff coming from Alfa?
“Absolutely.”
Alfa likes to say it has the youngest demographics among car buyers, which might mean their buyers weren’t around for the bad old days of Alfa quality problems, part of the reason Alfa left the US market in the 1990s. Has that changed? Dominique assures that it has. But the 2021 JD Power Initial Quality Study that measures quality in the first 90 days of ownership ranks Alfa Romeo five spots from the bottom with 204 problems per 100 vehicles (the winner, Ram, had 128 PP100). It was below Land Rover. Things got better in the 2022 IQS, with Alfa seven spots from the bottom but with 211 PP100.
In JDP’s 2021 Vehicle Dependability Study, which looks at quality after three years of ownership, Alfa Romeo was second from last, with 196 PP100, worse than Tesla. For 2022 Alfa had risen to fourth from last, with 245 PP100.
Granted, those problems nowadays tend to be getting your infotainment to work, or connecting your smart phone, rather than having your transmission fall out or your engine blow up. So chances are your car will be “reliable”—just be sure to spend extra time at the dealer to get the tutorial on that infotainment interface.
In J.D. Power’s APEAL study, which measures things owners like in the first 90 days of ownership, Alfa Romeo was tenth out of 14 brands measured, still below industry average.
Does that mean you should shy away from Alfa? Come on, man—life comes with risks, take a risk and buy an Alfa Romeo! The passion and performance could very easily outweigh a few quality issues that might pop up. Arrivederci!
