Alfa 33 tops summer launches

Concours season is always packed with debuts to interest classic fans, but this year a factory reveal outdid them all

WITH PEBBLE BEACH, The Quail and Salon Privé the traditional launchpads for cars with an historical angle - whether fresh-to-market restomods or old names dropping new cars - August and September are always frenetic on that front, but this year the multiple reveals at the big events were comprehensively trumped by a factory effort in Italy. It was always going to be, from the moment that someone at Stellantis rubberstamped Alfa Romeo reviving the legendary Tipo 33 Stradale moniker. The news broke on 31 August that Alfa Romeo would build via Touring Superleggera - a limited run of 33 cars (even though every one of them has already been accounted for, following a preview during the F1 race at Monza in 2022) in its first foray for decades into fuoriserie (custom-built) road-legal cars.

Unveiled at the factory museum in Milan, the roadgoing supercar was designed by Alejandro Mesonero-Romanos's team and certainly wears its styling cues from Franco Scaglione's 1967 original on its sleeve. It will have largely carbonfibre bodywork and tub with aluminium subframes and either 607bhp twin-turbo V6 or 750bhp electric power. In a typical motor industry irony it will use the Maserati MC20 chassis, which itself grew out of an Alfa concept. There will be three official colours, but customers stumping up the rumoured £1.5m can have any colour they want, and pretty much any other personalisation, too.