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Alfa Romeo to develop a large car in the United States

MILAN — Itay's Alfa Romeo will work on a new large car in the United States to be launched in 2027, the brand's head Jean-Philippe Imparato said on Friday, adding however the group had not yet decided where to manufacture it. Imparato said the step was key to tailoring the design for overseas markets, helping Alfa Romeo to strengthen its position as an international premium brand of carmaker Stellantis. "Our offer for a large size vehicle must fit international markets, American, Chinese, European," he said during a media call, a day after parent Stellantis released first half results. Alfa Romeo is still assessing whether the new model will be an SUV or crossover bigger though it already has Stelvio with Tonale on the way, or a sedan bigger than Giulia, but it will probably not be an SUV as large as BMW's X5 or X6, Imparato said. He told Automotive News that the vehicle could be a mix of the two vehicle types, perhaps not unlike the new Toyota Crown. "We want to find the right mix," he said. "It's a decision we will take by the end of this year." Imparato said developing the car in the U.S. did not mean it would be produced in North America. "Producing in the U.S. is not something we have decided and it is something we don't want to decide now," he added. Alfa's two production sites are in Italy.  

Alfa Romeo's Giulia Quadrifoglio gets the GTA treatment

Alfa Romeo will celebrate 110 years of building some of the world's most emotional driving machines with a brand-new Giulia Quadrifoglio GTA. GTA, which stands for "Gran Turismo Alleggerita," is a throwback to the 1965 Giulia Sprint GT, which first got the treatment. The new GTA and GTAm will elevate the Giulia's already driver-friendly formula to a whole new level.  If the plain-Jane Giulia Quadrifoglio is a BMW M3 or Mercedes-AMG C63 competitor, the GTA is your Competition or "S" variant, respectively. It boasts more power, less weight, enhanced aero, a revised suspension, and a reworked chassis and interior designed to keep the driver in place and focused on one task and one task alone: driving fast.  The wick on the GTA's 2.9-liter twin-turbocharged V6 has been turned up a bit, resulting in a new peak rating of 540 horsepower (up 30 from the base car). To reduce weight, Alfa replaced a host of exterior panels with carbon fiber equivalents. The carbon treatment extends to some other components, such as a the drive shaft. Alfa says the net reduction works out to 220 pounds.  Outside, the aero has been completely revised with technical know-how provided by Sauber Engineering (of F1 renown). It also boasts 20-inch center-locking wheels and a titanium exhaust system. Alfa replaced many of the suspension bushings, the shocks and the springs with performance-friendly hardware. The GTAm pushes the formula even farther. We hesitate to compare a sport sedan to a GT Coupe, but the relationship between GTA and GTAm is quite similar to that between the Porsche 911 GT3 and GT3 RS. Both are fundamentally the same car, but the latter compromises a great deal more of its daily drivability for the sake of improving its on-track feel and performance.  With the GTAm, this included a set of carbon-backed front bucket seats with six-point harnesses, Lexan window inserts for the side and rear windows, and a rear seat delete. In place of the rear bench, you get a harness bar attached to a structural roll hoop, plus a handy little cubby for storing your custom Bell helmet in Alfa's GTA livery (which comes with the car, as well as an Alpinestars race suit, gloves and shoes, and a personalized Goodwool car cover). Checking in at just 3,350 pounds, the GTAm boasts a power-to-weight ratio of 6.2 pounds per horsepower, which Alfa says is the best in the class, enabling a 0-60 run in just 3.6 seconds.

Ralph Gilles talks minivans, Millennials, mobility, and kissing Alfa Romeos

We sat down with Ralph Gilles, the global head of design for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, at the 2017 Detroit Auto Show. The veteran stylist has worked for the company for 25 years, and oversees the design of all of the products in the FCA portfolio – everything from mobility pods to Maseratis. This serves Gilles just fine, as his personal automotive interests are exceedingly diverse. The FCA stand was unusually quiet (until Vice President Joe Biden stopped by at the end of our time there) and Gilles was willing to weigh in on a wide range of subjects. Autoblog: We're seeing all of these autonomous mobility pods like Portal being presented at auto shows like CES or NAIAS, but we're not seeing any adoption of this kind of small vehicle in the market. What's your perspective on our pod-like autonomous future versus our truck-centric present? Ralph Gilles: Obviously I pay attention to the industry as much as your readers and yourself, and everyone has a take on the future. We had a debate, we could have done a supercar or something for pure sex appeal [ apparently that's also in the works], but we chose something practical, to really look at the future in a different perspective. We have these Millennials, a huge swath of people born between 1982 and 2004, and the oldest ones are turning 35 right about now, and a lot of them are having families later in life but when they have them they have a little more buying power, so it makes for an interesting cocktail. The one stipulation we had on the Portal project was that everyone had to be a Millennial to be on the team. So that excluded me, I had more of a coach role on the team. And to your point, the Portal in its current state as you see it is not going to be on the road tomorrow. But there's a lot of ideas, a lot of connectivity ideas, a lot of styling ideas, even lighting and technologies that will absolutely find their way into vehicles in the next few years. AB: Being a Detroiter, all of this attention we've had recently in Vegas, CES – I heard that they're maybe going to be running the show at the same time next year. Do you feel a little protective of the Detroit Show? RG: Yeah, it's something to watch. I hope it's not an aggressive thing on their part, by moving the shows on top of each other. They're both important shows. CES, I've been going to for the last five years, and it's changing. There's a lot more automotive content, but there are a lot more start-ups too, and it's interesting to watch.