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2017 Alfa Romeo Giulia Ti Lusso Drivers' Notes | We've got a crush on Giulia

American car enthusiasts have pined over Alfa Romeos for decades. The automaker stopped importing cars to the U.S. in 1995, with only a brief appearance with the beautiful but exotic 8C Competizione. The 4C followed along a few years later, but it too was a niche product, mainly intended to raise brand awareness than raise sales. That's where the Giulia steps in. As a compact sport sedan, Giulia is Alfa's BMW 3 Series competitor. Sure, the Giulia Quadrifoglio might get all the headlines, but cars like the Giulia Ti Lusso and Sport will be the real volume models. This is an extremely cutthroat segment with high expectations when it comes to both luxury and performance. Alfa has been out of the game for a long time, and the reputation it left wasn't exactly the greatest. Alfa Romeo has a lot riding on this car. Associate Editor Reese Counts: I like this car right from the start. It's a looker. While I prefer colors that pop, the Giulia looks wonderful even in this metallic black paint. The proportions are all perfect, and that iconic grille has rarely looked better. If Alfa does one thing right, its the styling. I felt the same way about the interior. The design is all simple and clean. The seats are particularly nice, with Ferrari-esque ribs down the middle. I'm also a big fan of the wood and leather. Only some cheap feeling plastic bits brought it down. This Giulia has a middling transmission, a good engine and great steering. There's some weird low-speed hesitation from the eight-speed that makes it feel like a dual-clutch. Once you're on it, the shifts are quick and smooth. The Lusso doesn't come with paddle shifters. That's fine. Not every car needs them. Buy the Sport if you want that sort of thing. Power and torque come on quick and effortlessly. It feels every bit as its class-leading (four-cylinder) 280 horsepower and 306 pound-feet for torque would suggest. The 5,500 rpm redline comes in quick and abrupt, making me wish it had a little more room to breathe up top. The steering is wonderful. It's quick and precise but doesn't feel jittery. I'd have to drive the competition back to back, but I think this has the best steering in the class. The wheel feels nice in your hands. Some of the other touch points are a letdown, but Alfa got the driving position and controls just right. Not a , but still a . Good engine, better steering.

The new Alfa Romeo Giulia needs to be a BMW beater

The introduction of the Alfa Romeo Giulia as a BMW challenger is a claim that historically has meant that it will not be as good as a BMW. Mercedes, Audi, Lexus, Infiniti, Cadillac, and a few others have tried to loosen BMW's grip on the sports sedan market with little success. It was BMW that was doing the copying when in the early sixties they looked to Alfa Romeo's sport sedans for inspiration. Alfa Romeo's pre-war racing pedigree was second to none, and series production Alfas were sporting twin cam engines, and fuel injection years before BMW. What the post-war Alfa cars did not offer was reliability and an North American dealer network that knew how to service or sell their products. Consequently in 1995 Alfa abandoned the US market. Now it is the Alfa Giulia taking aim at the BMW 3-series. The Fiat/Chrysler group has a lot of resources (think Ferrari), and the engineering chops to beat BMW at its own game, but it will take a long time to build a reliable dealer network, not to mention the quality issues that have dogged them for decades. Alfa will follow what has become a familiar recipe to challenge the 3-series. With 3 sets of trim available, the most affordable model, the Giulia, and further upscale, Giulia ti, both with a turbocharged 4-banger and 276 HP compares favorably with the BMW 328i and the Audi A4. The 505 HP Giulia flagship is shooting for the M4/3. Good luck with that, Alfa. A delayed introduction hints of troubles to come. Unfortunately for Alfa both the Audi A4 and BMW 3-series have millions of dedicated fans, most of whom do not have to be reminded about their automobile's pedigree. Millennial have never had the chance to aspire for an Alfa, and the older generations that still remember them are only a very small share of the market. Alfa has to avoid joining the automotive graveyard of models that have tried to attain BMW's status. Just to be cruel I will mention the Cadillac Cimarron. If you are too young to remember, it was the cheapest Chevy front wheel drive platform with a Cadillac badge. Panned by both GM management and the automotive press, it was a spectacular flop. I hope that the executives of the Fiat/Chrysler group remember it well. We do not need a Fiat in a stylish suit.

Alfa Romeo drops its Giorgio platform as it electrifies for the future

Alfa Romeo, a storied Italian automaker with a tremendous amount of goodwill from the automotive enthusiast crowd, is about to go through yet another major transformation. According to reports, including this one from Automotive News Europe, newly appointed Alfa Romeo CEO Jean-Philippe Imparato told Italian journalists during a roundtable event that all future vehicles from the company would be electrified and built on a new platform known internally as the STLA large-vehicle architecture that will be shared across brands under the Stellantis umbrella. "We are working on the Large platform of Stellantis and we will no longer use the Giorgio,” Imparato said. “We must take advantage of the volumes to take all possible opportunities and bring an EV range to Alfa Romeo, but always with the touch of Alfa Romeo.” That means the well-regarded Giorgio platform that currently underpins Alfa Romeo's only two mainstream products, the Giulia sedan and the Stelvio crossover, will come to an inglorious end. That's a shame. The Giorgio platform didn't just cost Alfa's previous parent company Fiat Chrysler Automobiles millions of dollars to engineer, it also gave the company a duo of vehicles that arguably drive better than anything else in their segments. Forbes reports that the Giorgio platform won't be entirely abandoned, as it will reportedly be integrated into the rest of the Stellantis portfolio in some way. We don't know exactly what that means, but perhaps it lives on in heavily modified form as the basis of crossovers and SUVs like the upcoming Jeep Grand Cherokee, which Jeep calls a completely new platform but one we believe shares engineering with the Giorgio. We also think it will underpin the upcoming Maserati Grecale. As for the future of Alfa Romeo, the next model coming from the brand is the Tonale, which was delayed by Imparato in order to get its plug-in hybrid powertrain just right. Tonale will use a platform shared with current Jeeps. Rumors suggest an even smaller crossover called the Brennero is on the way, also using a hybrid drivetrain. Past that, we'll just have to wait and see — Imparato says new 5-year and 10-year plans are currently being finalized. In any case, we doubt there will be any significant updates to the Giulia or Stelvio as the brand moves all its resources to its electrified intentions. Related video: