Alfa Romeo is sending off internal combustion engines with a bang, with a twin-turbo V6 supercar reportedly in the works.
CAR reports the vehicle will be previewed as a design study in 2023, with a low-volume production car to follow likely before 2025 if there’s demand.
Alfa Romeo has said all new vehicle launches from 2025 will be electric vehicles, ahead of a switch to an EV-only lineup in 2027.
The company’s head of design, Alejandro Mesonero-Romanos, has previously hinted at an exciting reveal.
“We will surprise you. Maybe. At some point. Soon,” he said.
8C Competizione
When asked if Alfa Romeo could be working on an electric sports car with vertically stacked battery modules behind the driver, à la Lotus’ upcoming sports car EV, Mesonero-Romanos ruled it out.
When asked if Alfa Romeo was working on a petrol-powered halo car instead, the design chief said, “I think you know what that means but I’m not saying anything”.
He also noted Alfa Romeo models wouldn’t feature retro design language, but would trigger an emotional or visceral response.
Mesonero-Romanos has yet to put his stamp on a new Alfa Romeo model, with the Tonale designed before he joined the brand.
33 Stradale
The brand’s CEO, Jean-Philippe Imparato, has previously said he’s eager to introduce Alfa Romeo halo cars once the brand has proven it can be profitable.
“I absolutely have two dreams: 33 Stradale and Duetto,’ he told CAR in January 2022.
“If one day, I’m able to say okay, ‘Alfa Romeo is secure now’. [Then] Duetto and 33 Stradale are my favourite options for the future. I would like to bring [them] onto the market. We can dream.”
He also name-checked those vehicles with Autocar earlier this year, though he tamped down expectations by saying any work on potential sports cars is being done in “parallel” with the main focus on “value creation, on pricing power, on residual value”.
Giulia GTAm
Only once Alfa Romeo has turned itself around, and shown that it can deliver its promised products and become a profitable business will Imparato approach Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares to “speak about some dream cars”.
The Ferrari-developed twin-turbocharged 2.9-litre V6 from the Giulia Quadrifoglio and Stelvio Quadrifoglio would be a logical choice for a sports car.
It’s been tuned to produce upwards of 402kW of power and 600Nm of torque in Giulia Quadrifoglio GTAm guise.
Alfa Romeo had been set to introduce a successor to its 8C supercar, before plans for the halo – plus a revived GTV and a large SUV – were scrapped in 2019 as part of cost-cutting for the brand as the brand recorded losses while not growing its sales sufficiently.
These models last appeared on Alfa Romeo’s future product plan in 2018.
The second-generation 8C would have used a carbon-fibre monocoque chassis, and a mid-mounted twin-turbocharged engine and an electrified front axle with a total system output of over 522kW.
Alfa Romeo claimed it’d do the 0-100km/h dash in around three seconds.
The first 8C used a 4.7-litre V8 producing 331kW of power and 480Nm of torque, good for a 0-100km/h time of 4.2 seconds.
