You thought the 4C’s death marked the end of internal combustion-powered Alfa Romeo sports cars, did you? Personally I’d assumed as much, but the brand still feels there’s unfinished work to do. As such, it’ll release a “very selective and very exclusive” coupe next year, according to CEO Jean-Philippe Imparato.
The chief execs words on the subject have been making the rounds today, but they were actually first reported in an interview by Autocar at the end of July:
“For the moment, I have two scenarios: full ICE or full EV,” he said. “It will be very exciting, very selective and very expensive.”
Then, this past Wednesday, Auto Express added that we could get a peek soon — as near as November. Also, Imparato seemed very confident that Alfa’s going to hit this one out of the park. Because it’s an Italian sports car, ya mook!
“At the end of November I will be in a situation to present to you a 2023 product event,” Imparato said. “After ‘sportiness’ you add ‘Italian’ and ‘red’ and you have the positioning of Alfa Romeo. It’s simple. Easy to execute.”
Of course, this wouldn’t be a true successor to the reasonably affordable, powerful-enough 4C; it sounds like something more extreme. That’s a little disappointing for those of us bemoaning the extinction of attainable enthusiast vehicles.
Auto Express included a render of what it believes the car could look like that I can’t embed here, but the general gist is Tipo 33 Stradale mashed with De Tomaso P72. To be fair, the P72 is already very evocative of the Ferrari P4/5 by Pininfarina commissioned by Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus. Any of those would serve as a worthy inspiration; they all share the optimal shape for an Italian supercar.
At the moment there’s no telling what this mysterious Alfa will entail under the hood, but the cynic in me predicts it might share bones with the Maserati MC20 because that would make sense and bespoke cars are expensive to design. There had been some rumblings of the MC20 gestating out of a cancelled 8C follow-up some years back, anyway. In May, Alfa’s North American head honcho Larry Dominique even name-dropped Maserati as he hedged the possibility of a future halo car for the brand.
Supercars aside, Alfa plans a drip feed of similarly limited-run products over the coming years. Imparato told Auto Express that the GTA line is finished for now, however fans can expect other “very specific, high-level offers” down the pike. One of those should be a restomodded 155 that looks like the V6 TI DTM car — just putting it out there.