Alfa Romeo Giulia

TO QUALIFY AS worthy game changers, most contenders display one or maybe two standout features. The Giulia has around half a dozen. As Alfa’s first compact executive saloon in half a decade, the first in over two decades to be built on a longitudinal-engined, rear drive platform and the first to spawn an SUV, the Giulia is the pivot around which its maker’s reinvention is designed to rotate. Not bad for a car that lingered on the drawing board longer than da Vinci’s parachute.

The circumstances of its repeated delay are now apparent: Alfa in general and boss Sergio Marchionne in particular were striving to get the model right – right enough to threaten Germany’s hegemony on the market and to make a telling impact in North America – and if that meant evolving through multiple unseen iterations, so be it. Certainly, the result is not immaculate or classleading – but its obvious strengths in styling, chassis dynamics and powertrains have served to reset our idea of what Alfa is capable of after 30 years of Fiat oversight.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the dramatic Quadrifoglio version. Prior to its launch, Alfa hadn’t built a truly compelling performance saloon since forever, yet under the watchful eye of Philippe Krief (a prominent former Ferrari engineer), carbonfibre was thrown at the weight problem, the body was garnished in active aero elements and the bonnet brimmed with an all-aluminium twin-turbo V6 not unrelated to the blown V8 found aboard the Ferrari California T.

Where the cooking model was commendable and thoroughly likeable, the Quadrifoglio proved that flat-out sensational was possible, too. Lined up together – the worthy volume contender and the extraordinary glacé cherry on top – the new Giulia range is easily good enough to begin returning Alfa to improbable good health. Better still, it promises to be just the start of Marchionne’s masterplan.