The Alfa Romeo Giulia Super soaks up our awful British roads like a Bentley, but steers and handles like a Lotus.
I LOVE Alfa Romeos. Back in the 19th century, when I had hair and worked at Motor Sport magazine, I jumped on the Alfa launch invites with great enthusiasm. I remember the Alfa 33 and its zingy boxer engine, the 164 with its cello-concerto V6 and the Cloverleaf 75, which even the Alfa media rep confessed was a car he climbed out of sweating as much as smiling.
That 75 went across the Fens like a punk in a mosh pit. The 33’s steering wheel was further away than the pedals. Almost nothing that involved a wire worked at all. However, to hear any of those sublime engines singing their way towards the red line, who’d care about backache, rust, lethal torque-steer or trivial details such as these?
Ducati bikes were the same— soulful engines undermined by a fragility of temperament and Friday-afternoon wiring. I’ve owned four, but never an Alfa.
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