The GTVeloce.com-munity

Seems to me that in the 60s and 70s - perhaps even the early 80s - Alfa was the sporty choice for both sedans and coupes at the 'affordable' but higher-than-most pricepoint. Sure you had a few competitors, like BMW, but they were yet to become as desirable as an Alfa Romeo and lacked the complete range. They also lacked history and were full of compromises - mind you, BMW worked at this market and certainly overtook Alfa during the late 80s. You also had a few coupes from the big manufacturers, but they lacked charm. Some even had the goodies - like Toyota's twin cam Celica in the 80s - but you knew this was just an effort to sell cars, not a passion for driving.

What happened, then? (Aside from the rust and 'Italian electricals'.) I don't agree that the Alfetta was a wrong turn - twin cams, style and the gearbox and transaxle at the rear sounds pretty distinctive to me. What really happened was that everyone else caught up. When your average Ford or GM product was ill-handling and clunky, with substandard brakes and a low-tech engine there was a clear distinction between run of the mill cars and Alfas. Now look. Twin cams and high outputs everywhere, barely any difference in suspension or transmission design and often wrapped in more than aceptable - even stylish - packages. Sure there are duds, but the differentiation is all at the brand level - not in engineering or design. Even when we go upmarket we see little that really enhances the driving experience - just a marketing campaign, a few more abbreviations (ABS, EDC, ABCDEFG) and a higher price based on increased isolation from the driving experience (lower NVH, better sound systems, navigation gear, DVDs etc).

Given that everyone has a safer, quieter, better handling and more accelerative vehicle to offer exactly where does Alfa now fit? All we have left is the brand. So we see Alfa's history and its style promoted to distinguish its cars from the competition. Because - GTAs aside, maybe - underneath the skin cars are all alike nowadays. Sure, minor differences here and there but really nothing like the gap between best and worst we used to see.

So where do we go from here? Well logically if all we need do is to brand our cars and add enough luxuries and horsepower to justify the premium then Alfa could just as well become a sub-brand underneath a multibrand umbrella - and it wouldn't matter. Hang on - where are we now? FIAT-owned, using FIAT-derived engines, shared chassis and no - heavens forbid - GM V6es. The future is now. It's downhill from here folks.