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2015 Alfa Romeo 4C First Drive [w/video]

The dissonance between first look and first wheel turn was jarring. Alfa Romeo had chosen a suitably hip venue in which to showcase the coupe that will mark the brand's honest-to-God return to the US market - a graffiti-festooned warehouse housing a boutique furniture company in San Francisco's Mission District. The curvilinear sports car proved a lovely stylistic counterpoint to its concrete and metal backdrop while feeling perfectly synced with the eye-watering square-footage prices of the environs. Where the young, rich, beautiful people gather, the 2015 Alfa Romeo 4C will be a star. And wherever they drive, expect things to get pretty loud. No sooner had I doubled over, dropped into the driver's seat, and fired to life the Alfa's utterly raucous little 1.7-liter engine, did the 'symphony' of the 4C begin. An introductory note of an inevitable chin scrape as I pulled out of the hipster parking lot and into the street was quickly followed by the uncivilized racket of the engine warming up, with only wafer-thin glass to filter the hubbub just behind my head. At a cold idle, the sound isn't unlike what I'd imagine it would be like to live inside of a Volkswagen TDI engine bay. Thankfully, as traffic cleared and The City's streets turned swiftly into undulating coastal roads, the experiential delta between heartthrob looks and project-car manners started to shrink. Unlike the last Alfas to be sold en masse on our shores, this is no beautiful boulevardier. What the 4C is, however, is hot hell's own driver's car. On public backroads, the Alfa is nothing short of a scalpel. Last year, newly minted Infiniti PR maestro (and former Autoblog European editor) Matt Davis had the cheek to call the 4C a "baby 458." That's an awfully powerful endorsement for a $55k featherweight rocking a mid-mounted turbo four, but the setting of the bar so high wasn't without just cause. Despite gaining a few hundred pounds worth of thicker carbon fiber, heavier US-spec airbags, standard AC and audio equipment and the like, the handsome Alfa coupe really does live up to its Italian sports car roots. With respect to the punchy engine, it's that carbon fiber tub that really sets the stage for this coupe to handle and perform so brilliantly. Added weight noted, let us pause for a moment to note that the 4C still tips the scales at an improbable 2,465 pounds.

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 flagship EV due in 2027 with 18-minute recharge time

Last July, Alfa Romeo boss Jean-Philippe Imparato said his Italian concern would develop a new battery-electric vehicle in the U.S. that would launch here in 2027. It would take the new top spot in the lineup, being larger than the Stelvio, full of tech and full of performance. During the launch of the Tonale in Japan, the boss shared provisional specs of the "high-performance SUV" with Automotive News Europe. The pack of some unknown size would juice motors putting out from 300 to 800 horsepower in the standard range, and around 1,000 horsepower in a Quadrifoglio trim. Here's the big stat: In ANE's words, an 800-volt architecture would enable "recharging times of 18 minutes max, [Imparato] said." We'd sure like to know the qualifications required to get an 18-minute charge. Porsche advertises the Taycan's 93.4-kWh Performance Battery Plus as being able to go from 5% state-of-charge to 80% in 22.5 minutes when the sedan's been optioned with the $460 On-Board DC Charger. Naturally, that's under ideal conditions and when plugged into a charger that can feed the Taycan at its max 270-kW rate. When veteran hypermiler Wayne Gerdes took a Taycan across the U.S. in five days, he said his first charge at a 350-kW Electrify America unit took 22 minutes to get the battery from 6% to 82%. Knowing that the initial few percent and those last 20% take longer than the meaty bit in the middle, we going to guess Imparato's time assessment leaves out the time-consuming portions of charging the battery near empty and close to full. But hey, four years is a long way away in the EV-verse.  The CEO said the Alfa Romeo will compete with the BMW X5, a crossover almost exactly ten inches longer than the Stelvio (pictured), which is currently the largest product in the portfolio and the best-seller in the U.S. The Italian might not share a traditional CUV shape with the German, Imparato having said that aerodynamic needs could lead to a shape between a sedan and a crossover. If things are on track in Milan, executives approved the design before the end of 2022.  We'll begin to see what Alfa Romeo's EV-only future when the brand's first dedicated EV shows in 2025. Related video: