Rejoice, Alfa Romeo cognoscenti

Tag : thigh-high stockings

MILAN - For a generation of American Alfisti, the return of AlfaRomeo is the Christmas that never comes. The brand - an upscaleimprint of the Fiat Group - left the American market in 1994 in a choking cloud ofaggravation and mediocrity. It wasn't that the cars wereparticularly awful - not particularly, anyway - but that whensomething did go wrong with Alfas, the dealerships wereinsufferable, the electrical problems insoluble, and the fixesuneconomical. And scoring replacement parts was like trying to buya human kidney on the black market.
It's a measure of how indelibly sexy, expressive, and cool thesecars were that people ever bought them or ever felt a twinge ofnostalgia when they were gone. The fact is, you could fit all theAmericans who ever heard of a Disco Volante or Vittorio Jano orTazio Nuvolari in a high school football stadium.
The brand narrative here has never been about performance,motorsports, or value. No, Alfa Romeo is, for most Americans, abouta quintessential Italian style, an aching, blushing, toe-curlingloveliness of line and profile.
It is about the inconvenient passion of Dustin Hoffman in "TheGraduate." It is about Fellini's moonlit "Juliet of the Spirits,"in which Giulietta Masina is pursued by a man, a Romeo, in aGiulietta Spider (which might qualify as the most knottedmetareference in film history). It is about youth, cool, andwhispered promises under the parapets.
Or is that just me?
Alfa has been strategizing its return to these shores almost sinceit left, but with the arrival of Fiat's rock star chief executive,Sergio Marchionne, in 2004, the plans have picked up pace. Lastyear, the company began importing its ultra-low-volume 8CCompetizione sports car through Maserati dealerships (another Fiatholding). Informed speculation had the company importing cars likethe awesome Brera coupe, the Spider, and perhaps the Kamalcrossover as early as 2010.
And yet, these best-laid plans have been overtaken by events: $5per gallon gasoline in California, the plummeting dollar againstthe euro, the subprime recession. All of this has taken the Alfabanner out of the hands of midsize cars and pushed it into theunlikely grasp of the new, B-segment hatchback, the MiTo.
It's a good thing it's so wonderful.
Aimed like Jove's thunderbolt at the BMW Mini, the MiTo was styledwith all the brio the word conveys by Alfa designer Juan ManuelDiaz. The young Argentine was in the studio one day in 2002,drooling over prototypes of the 8C sports car, feeling frustratedthat he himself could never afford such a car. According toAutomotive News, he began sketching the MiTo as an affordableversion of the audacious 8C.