Hall of fame/shame: 33 of Alfa Romeo's greatest hits... and misses

Alfa was race first, road second. In the hands of Ugo Sivocci, the lightened, 6cyl RLTF gave AR its first big international race victory, taking the chequered flag in the 1923 Targa Florio. A couple of months later, the RLTF won the Ravenna Grand Prix, handing a first win to an ambitious young driver by the name of Enzo Ferrari. Enzo would run Alfa’s race outfit, before departing to establish his own car company. Whatever happened to those guys?

Vittorio Jano’s 8cyl, twin supercharged masterpiece – and the world’s first true single seater GP racecar – dominated track racing in the early 1930s, establishing Alfa as the Red Bull of the era, only 1,000 per cent cooler. Though it started life making just over 200bhp, the P3’s output would reach a faintly terrifying 330bhp by 1935. That power would prove just enough to secure one of history’s all time underdog victories in the ’35 German GP.

The 6C was expensive, powerful and unquestionably beautiful. Unfortunately it was also a favourite of Italian dictator and all round bad egg, Benito Mussolini. In the 1930s, Mussolini brought Alfa under his control, establishing it as a sportswashing instrument of the fascist Italian state. Alfa’s always struggled to disentangle itself from national politics, but the late 1930s were a low ebb.

Though it was a decade old design by 1950, the supercharged 158 won every race of the inaugural season of the F1 World Championship in which it competed, delivering the driver’s title to Giuseppe Farina. Lightly fettled for 1951, it took Juan Manuel Fangio to victory that season too. Three quarters of a century later, Alfa’s yet to add to those back to back F1 titles. As milestones go, at least the 158’s a pretty one.

This experimental racing car looks wildly futuristic today. When the Disco Volante landed in the early 1950s, we’re lucky it wasn’t burned at the stake by panicking onlookers. With enclosed bodywork sculpted in the wind tunnel, the spaceship-like Disco Volante boasted a radically low drag coefficient. Fitted with Alfa’s straight six engine, it was capable of 140 miles an hour. The tomorrow we were promised, but never got.

Italy’s answer to the Willys Jeep and Land Rover, a whole lot more unnecessarily complicated than either. Developed in response to a request from the Italian government for a light reconnaissance vehicle, the Matta was offered in military and civilian guise. Sophisticated suspension meant it would get very off road. Complex 1.9-litre petrol engine (complete with twin overhead cams) meant it probably wouldn’t get back.

Another Alfa low drag experiment, Franco Scaglione’s BAT lived up to its name by looking a) like the company car of some shadowy, caped superhero, and b) utterly, well, bats**t. Scaglione blended science and art to create a prototype both extraordinary and extraordinarily efficient: despite its 4cyl engine developing barely 40bhp, the original BAT was allegedly clocked at 124mph. The Batmobile was no slice of show stand vapour. It worked.

Probably the most influential Alfa of them all. The delicious, Bertone designed Giulia wasn’t just smartly engineered and fine to drive, it effectively invented the exec saloon class, paving the way for BMW’s 3 Series and the rest. With a lightweight monocoque body, sublime aluminium twin cam engines and coil spring suspension all round, the Giulia was a genuine trailblazer: Alfa leading the charge rather than playing catch up.

The OG. The pinnacle. The (tiny, lightweight) daddy. With steel panels switched for aluminium, Plexiglas glazing and magnesium wheels, the GTA boasted a power to weight ratio of 230bhp per tonne in race trim: by 1960s standards, basically a space rocket. The GTA was sublime on track – racking up a reputed 200 victories in the 1966 season alone – and perhaps even better on the road: a fizzing, furious ball of pure joy.

And here’s to you, Mrs Robinson... Pininfarina’s pitch perfect roadster was a hit even before its starring role in The Graduate. Once Dustin Hoffman got his slender hands on it, the Spider – or Duetto, as some knew it – rose to the status of bona fide pop culture legend. It would prove to be the final car designed by Battista Pininfarina himself. What a way to bow out – so immaculate were the Spider’s lines, it would remain in production for nearly 30 years.

The prettiest Alfa of all time, so therefore the prettiest car of all time. Effectively a roadgoing version of Alfa’s Tipo 33 sports racing prototype, at launch the 33 Stradale was not only the world’s most expensive car, but also its fastest accelerating, the 2.0 V8 generating 230bhp in a spindle of aluminium weighing barely 700kg. Despite its groundbreaking performance, despite its butterfly doors, despite those looks, the 33 Stradale struggled to sell.

A Bertone concept based on a spare 33 Stradale chassis (told you Alfa struggled to sell them) and named after British football’s least popular competition, the Carabo was Marcello Gandini’s blueprint for the future of the supercar, foreshadowing the Lamborghini Countach with its outrageously wedgy profile and scissor doors: in fact, it was the first car ever to use them. Stood less than 39 inches tall, thus making the original Ford GT40 look like an SUV.

Peak early 1970s cool. The 2+2 Montreal not only looked magnificently louche, but – with a 2.6-litre V8 closely related to that of the 33 Stradale – had the soul of a supercar, and performance to match. OK, at launch it cost twice as much as a Jag E-Type. And more than a 911. And pretty much the same as a Ferrari Dino. But did any of those cars have retractable headlight grilles? No, they did not. Case closed, your honour.

Alfa’s first FWD offering was a technological tour de force of its day, upstaging Lambo’s Countach prototype when it was unveiled at the Turin Auto Show. But the Alfasud was undone by politics and rust – to stimulate the economy of the country’s south, the Italian government insisted it would be made in a factory just outside Naples, resulting in all the quality you’d expect from a workforce with no experience of car building but plenty of experience of going on strike.

The driving position was terrible. The underpinnings were pensionable. The reliability... wasn’t. But the fuel injected V6 was glorious, gifting the GTV serious smarts not just on the road but around the track, too: it would go on to win the European Touring Car Championship four years on the spin. Sensible buyers went for the cheaper, more reliable Porsche 924. But where’s the fun in sensible?

Alfa’s tie-up with Nissan – a liaison that also birthed the Nissan Sunny – could have delivered Italian looks with Japanese build quality. Sadly the Arna served up exactly the opposite: utterly anonymous visuals, married to the thrilling lottery of 1980s Italian electrics. Alfa reckoned it could sell 60,000 Arnas a year, but didn’t manage that number in total over the car’s four year lifespan. That rarest of things, an entirely forgettable Alfa.

Yep, the 1980s were a bad era for Alfa. The 75 wasn’t quite such a flop as the Arna – which, OK, is like being ‘nicer than chlamydia’ – but was still decidedly floppy. Effectively a reworked version of the old Giulietta – which itself had borrowed plenty from the even older Alfetta – the 75 was behind the times even at launch. Roof mounted switchgear, the world’s oddest handbrake and mystifying lack of rear legroom see this one filed under ‘WTF ergonomics’.

Riccardo Patrese described it as ‘the worst car he ever drove’. Alfa’s 1985 F1 machine was so spectacularly uncompetitive that, halfway through the season and with no points scored, the team simply ditched it for the previous year’s car (which also failed to score a point, but hey, always good to change things up, right?). The experience proved so traumatic it sent Alfa into a self imposed three decade exile from F1.

We’ve all been there. You’ve spent years developing a V10 F1 engine, only to discover that it’s just too heavy to stick into your Grand Prix car. So what do you do? Stick it in middle of your sensible executive saloon, of course, to create a 600bhp 217mph racing monster. History’s ultimate sleeper, the 164 ProCar would never race competitively, which – given it blended F1 car power with absolutely zero downforce – was possibly for the best.

Some will tell you ‘Il Mostro’ is perhaps the ugliest car ever to wear the Alfa badge. You must ignore these folk. The brutalist SZ was a thing of uncompromising beauty, its thermoplastic composite bodywork (meant to save kilos, somehow ended up weighing almost exactly the same as the 75 saloon on which it was based, because Alfa) looking better with every passing year. You may disagree. But you’ll be wrong.

Peak touring car cool. For the 1993 season, Alfa rocked up at Germany’s DTM championship with this satanic reworking of its 155 saloon, replete with four wheel drive, carbon fibre body and a sophisticated 2.5-litre V6 spinning to nearly 12,000rpm. Sounded great, looked great – and (perhaps most improbably) went great. The 155 crushed Merc and BMW in their own backyard to deliver the 1993 DTM title to Nicola Larini. In your face, Germany! Again!

An extraordinary feat of packaging. Extraordinary in the sense of ‘what did they do with all the cabin and luggage space?’ The GTV may have been as practical as windscreen wipers on a submarine, but made sense on an emotional level (the most important of all the levels) with its combination of sparkly engines, happy handling and a pretty interior that occasionally didn’t even fall apart within 20 minutes of driving off the forecourt.

Discerning hot hatch enthusiasts of the era bought a 306 GTi-6, but the 145 was the romantic choice. Its looks might have been slightly gopping – blame Chris Bangle – but a zippy 148bhp twin spark 2.0-litre, crisp five speed box and tidy chassis imbued the Cloverleaf a unique charm. Few survive today, those that avoided falling victim to ‘roadside beech trees’ instead falling victim to rust.

As we all know, front wheel drive super saloons don’t work. Asking the same two patches of rubber to manage both propulsion and steering duties is a recipe for wayward handling and driving dissatisfaction. But there’s always an exception that proves the rule, and the 156 GTA delivered BMW bashing performance despite its wrong wheel drive configuration. How the company managed this witchcraft, no one seems quite sure. Including Alfa.

On paper, it looked great. And frankly ‘on paper’ was the best way to experience the Spider (and its coupe sibling, the Brera). Great on a bedroom wall poster, rather less great from behind the wheel. The Spider’s chassis served up none of the excitement promised by the rock star aesthetics, while the build quality was notable only for its utter absence. You’d have been delighted if someone on your street bought one, so long as that someone wasn’t you.

The 8C – which, under its indecently beautiful carbon fibre skin, borrowed plenty from the less scarce Maserati GranTurismo – was far from the last word in handling dynamics. Hardly a problem, as ‘going for a drive in it’ was frankly an unnecessarily distraction from the main pleasure of ‘just standing and staring at it’. Sounded as good as it looked, which is saying something. A treat for eyes and ears.

Aimed to stick it to BMW’s Mini with irresistible Italian styling and irresistible Italian handling. Failed on pretty much every front. The MiTo looked weirdly gawky, and, with its Fiat Punto underpinnings, steered no more elegantly. Might have sold more if Alfa had a) offered it as a 5dr and b) made it less pants. And then there was the name – a portmanteau of ‘Milano’ and ‘Torino’ – which sounded like a brand of canned canine sustenance. A dog’s dinner.

So close, yet so far. The 4C’s list of raw ingredients were so delicious – mid-engined, rear drive, two seats, lightweight carbon chassis – it seemed impossible that even Alfa could bugger up the bake. Somehow it managed it. The 4C drove in a fashion so disjointed, so lurchy and so twitchy, one could only conclude it was either a) broken or b) haunted by vengeful spirits. More fool us for daring to believe. As the old quote goes, it’s the hope that kills you.

You want to out-Golf GTI the Golf GTI, you’d better bring your A-game. With the Giulietta QV, Alfa failed to bring any game in the first half of its alphabet. Stodgy handling and an even stodgier double clutch gearbox – along with frustratingly offset pedals, frustratingly unyielding seats and... in fact frustratingly nearly everything – relegated the Cloverleaf Giulietta to the most tepid end of the great hot hatch league table. Came for the king, missed by a mile.

Now that’s a proper Cloverleaf. The super saloon edition of Alfa’s first RWD offering in decades was an absolute honey, its ‘three quarters of a Ferrari engine’ V6 generously doling out ample power, noise and skids on demand. The Alfa was sharper handling... and the M3 a classier all-rounder, but who would you prefer to hang out with? A true spiritual successor to the Giulia Sprint GTA. Compliments don’t come much higher.

Is this merely an excuse to stick another GTA on the list? Yes, yes it is. Do we apologise for this? No, no we do not. It might hail from Bristol rather than Balocco, but Alfaholics’ glorious restomod sharpens up the 1960s original to appeal to our discerning 21st century palates. Given the 3,000 hours of work that goes into each car, the GTA-R’s £300k price tag doesn’t sound that ridiculous, right? Someone? Anyone?

On 10 April, 2024, Alfa revealed its first EV, proudly announcing its battery powered SUV would be called the Milano. Five days later, it was rechristened the Junior. Why? The Italian government curtly reminded Alfa that only products made in Italy could employ such an Italian name. And the Junior – despite Alfa’s claims of passione and velocita – was very much made in... Poland. A marketing fail on so very many levels.

So rare and absurdly expensive is Alfa’s new mid-engined supercar, you could argue it’s no more than an irrelevant sidenote. You might well be correct. But, at the same time, the 33 Stradale is proof that, when Alfa can avoid being entirely mad for a while, it’s still capable of cooking up world class delicacies. Sure, there’s plenty of Maserati under the skin, but the nuova 33 Stradale is also fizzy, fun, special to sit in and breathtaking to behold.