Alfa Romeo boss: 'Quadrifoglio can be BEV, but it can also be ICE'

By law, Alfa articles start with an Italian exclamation. Here goes: mamma mia, the petrol Quadrifoglio lives! Bravissimo! Etc. Until recently Alfa planned the next Giulia and Stelvio as all electric. Now, CEO Santo Ficili says that’s changed. Tariff chaos and a slow in the EV transition mean that flexibility is a must. “There will be PHEV and HEV and BEV.”

He goes on. “My dream is to keep alive the Quadrifoglio. We can’t forget this. Quadrifoglio can be BEV, why not? But it can also be ICE.” Viva V6.

The electric Alfas will be first, with Stelvio at the end of this year and Giulia next – main versions first then Quadrifoglio. They can have up to 800V for fast charging, big batteries for long range, and rear or twin motors.

Ficili says they are having a last minute front end redesign, so they have enough cooling intakes for petrol engines. “The design must be in line with the other models that we want to launch.”

How will Alfa make cars that feel different from the rest of the sprawling Stellantis Group’s? “I think the Alfa Romeo brand is Italy, is red or rosso in Italian, and is sport. Italian. Red. Sport. We need to find the right balance between these three. What I want for the product is Alfa Romeo only.”

Design is the first element of this Alfa character, explains Ficili. “When you look at the car, you must understand immediately it is an Alfa. And the driver must have everything under control. So I’m not imagining tonnes of things around you that don’t help.

“We need the right balance between suspension, steering, absorption, exhaust and engines to find the right handling of the car.”

But there’s a problem. Stubbornly low sales. Alfa hyped the Tonale and Junior as sales boosters because small and compact crossovers dominate today’s market. But actually Alfa monthly sales are the same as five years ago, when the MiTo and Giulietta were in their death spirals.

I mention I’ve lost count of the number of previous Alfa bosses who said sales would double, only to see them fall. “We need to keep the customers who are in love with Alfa – and there is a long queue, because of the legacy, the racing, the glory, the product we created in the past.”

OK, but why aren’t the people in this queue buying your cars? And how do you build buzz for Alfa among people who don’t actually know much about all that? “Junior is the right model to satisfy younger people. A bridge between new customers and the older Alfisti.” He says it’s doing well. Meanwhile the Tonale, which started quite strongly then tailed off, will get a deep facelift late this year.

With that and the next Stelvio and Giulia, there’ll be a freshness about Alfa’s range that it hasn’t had for many years. Even so, Alfa will always be small. “We aren’t BMW.” Indeed. BMW, with its much bigger range, sells 20 times as many as Alfa. But then Alfa is just a small part of the huge Stellantis Group and gets lots of synergies. The challenge is to make its cars different from the related brands.

To help keep the Alfa flame burning bright, there will be more of the high end specials like the 33 Stradale, once its two-year production run is over. “If I can also search for synergies with Maserati, we can imagine for sure to make products like this. We had the 8C, 6C, 4C. It’s easy. Why? Because I can look in the past of Alfa Romeo.”

But it’s £1.7m a copy. I mention that if Alfa is making pretty ordinary small crossovers like the Junior, it has to earn the right to its name by also having more distinct cars at a less extreme price than the 33. He says the 33 will be a design influence. “We can consider parts of this design, and move from these to the future models.”

From 1950 to 2010 Alfa made so many gorgeous and relatively affordable coupes and spiders. “There is space to work in the smaller segments: coupe, spider. But this is not our priority now, because now we need the models that can deliver volume that can sustain the brand.”

There’s simply too much turbulence, too much uncertainty, to have the luxury of launching minority cars. “We need to consider the two years ahead that are not so clear. And then we’ll see.”