Stop the press: there's a gorgeous new V6 Alfa Romeo, and it's the 'Cuorerosso'

Alfa Romeo's new-car pipeline has been a bit threadbare over the past decade. But over the next three years more more launches are at last planned.

The Giulia and Stelvio might be lovely cars, but their ages are into double figures now. Replacements were planned to launch two years ago as all electric. But as it became clear there wouldn't be enough buyers, they got delayed to install engines.

Meanwhile the little Junior is the last car to be built on an old PSA paltform, and the Tonale hasn't been doing much business.

At the Paris Show, Alfa is showing a concept called the Cuorerosso (red heart doesn't sound so good does it). Against the run of play for this show, it has an actual engine, Alfa's awesome V6 no less, here fully hybridised and driving all four wheels. But Alfa says the Cuorerosso previews a multi-energy future for the brand as it's built around a versatile platform.

It's a 2+2, with rear-hinged back doors like a Mazda RX-8. It has about the footprint of Giulia but is lower, lending it a strikingly wide and potent stance. Zinging back off its pointy nose, all the surfaces are carved clean, chopped off by a high reverse-raked tail.

Nice. But Alfa people are careful to say this isn't the new Giulia. So what are we to make of it?

Well there's other business to be done first. Next year Alfa launches a mid-size crossover, which a bit bigger than the Tonale and on a more modern group platform.

In 2028 it's followed by a hatchback, a sort of very late replacement for the Giulietta.

Only after that will we get the Giulia and Stelvio replacements, with full EV and petrol hybrid power. The Giulia, we hear, wasn't planned to have much of the Cuorerosso design about it. But we heard that now the top management has seen the show car, they want to put a bit more of it into the future range.