As the great tenor Andrea Bocelli delivered a powerful performance of Nessun Dorma, you couldn't help but feel the hopes of Alfa Romeo with every note.
The event at the auto maker's newly opened museum north of Milan, called La macchina del tempo, marked the public debut of the Giulia, a performance sedan designed to evoke the passion and fire so unique to Italian cars – and elements missing from the brand's more modern products for too long, aside from the recent 4C.
Sergio Marchionne, CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), smiled broadly and heartily shook hands with each member of the "skunk team" – the secret development group – as he welcomed them to the stage. Some broke into tears as employees and loyalists applauded and cheered.
Throughout the night, the message was clear: the Germans can keep their image of cold, calculating perfection. And Americans can have their raw, unrefined power. If anyone can stir the soul and bring a lump to your throat, leave it to the Italians. "Being different means rediscovering your identity," said Marchionne in Italian, through a translator. "We can finally say today, it's the first day of the new era of Alfa. The brand is on the verge of retaking its rightful position in the market; it will once again become one of the leading symbols of Italian engineering and style, an icon of Italian's technological excellence and creative spirit."
The Ferrari-derived, twin-turbocharged, all-aluminum V-6 under the hood will send 510 horsepower to its rear wheels, an astounding 85 more than the BMW M3, the Giulia's obvious rival in both size and performance. With an all-new aluminum chassis helping achieve a 2.99 weight-to-horsepower ratio (which puts the car at 1,525 kilograms on our calculator), the Giulia will get to 100 km/h in 3.9 seconds. As a smaller mid-sized sport sedan, it has the longest wheelbase in its class and a torque-vectoring system made possible with a dual-clutch differential.
While the body shows hints of the Bimmer from the side, it is beautifully simple and muscular and developed for natural downforce, with a long hood, short trunk and short overhangs. An active front splitter aids aerodynamics at higher speeds; a newly refreshed Alfa logo sits on that famous three-part grille.
The logo, one of the most distinctive in the world, is also one of the most perplexing; why does it have a serpent eating a man, with a red cross beside it? The serpent design belonged to the House of Visconti, which ruled Milan in the Middle Ages. According to reports by Alfa Romeo, the man in the serpent's mouth isn't going in, he's coming out, signifying a rebirth. But according to the website of the Museo Del Duomo in Milan – as well as other sources – the serpent is eating a Saracen, which was a term for Muslims during the Crusades. Other sources say the man is actually a child, and the whole design was usurped by Otho Visconti, the founder of the family, after he had slain a large Saracen and taken the design from his shield. The red cross beside the serpent is a Christian remnant from the Crusades, as well.
The Guilia will almost certainly be offered in a lower-priced version with a four-cylinder, turbocharged engine, a necessary step for volume sales. But with a history of temperamental mechanicals, the Italian auto maker has to make sure its reliability is at least middling, if not excellent, to keep interest. No prices have yet been set, but it should sit around the M3's starting point of $74,000 in Canada, if not a little higher, selling from dedicated Alfa dealerships in Oakville, Windsor and Vaughn in Ontario, along with Quebec City, Montreal and Vancouver. The sedan is expected to arrive later next year.
In the meantime, Alfa is focusing on reviving that familiar Italian passion, lost for decades from an historic marque that has been trying to simply compete against the mainstream in Europe for decades.
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