Justin Hynes takes an Alfa GT out and about in Monaco - by way of a favour for a female friend
A friend of mine has a dilemma. She wants a new car. Currently she drives a "sports coupé" but she thinks it's too girly. The automotive equiavalent of Destiny's Child, it makes something approaching the right statement while never sounding like anybody but a savvy marketeer means any of it.
My friend wants something a little tough, but not stupidly macho, something in touch with its tasteful feminine side as well as its balls-out ability to rock. Less Destiny's Child, more The Darkness.
She has a dilemma. For the mid-range money she wants to spend there is little out there. BMW 3-series? Bit predictable, coupé's bloody expensive, bit Braun razor, Gucci sunglasses, nice but just a bit obvious.
Peugeot 406 coupé? Oh so pretty, one of Pininfarina's finest hours, but toothless. Bit ad exec who can't bring him/herself to accept the cliché of a BMW.
Mercedes C class? Yeah, right.
What about an MX5? Fun but too one-dimensional. MR2? Even more monomaniacal.
Some wobbly looking Volvo? Do they make anything like that and, if they do, that you can't remember says it all? You see her problem.
So, being a helpful sort, I went to Monaco to find the right car. Yes, Monaco. Look, it's important. It's a problem. And Monaco, where unless you're growling round in a Ferrari 612 you're nothing, is just the type of place where the merits of a sports coupé can be properly judged by whether or not some botoxed Balenciaga-dressed model/actress /whatever swivels her head on her swan-like neck for a gawp. Fair test.
And over the course of an impossibly hard 24 hours rattling between the course of the Grand Prix and the mountainous Monte Carlo rally stages that give the principality its Hollywood set backdrop, I think I might have found the answer.
The Alfa GT.
First off. It's Italian. That denotes style, a certain fashion savvy. It also speaks of some kind of vague clue as to how a sports car should be built. And in both cases the new Alfa GT hits that mark.
If you're my friend then the fact that it's a bliddidy-blah kind of engine with a special multi-widgeted dooberry array is about as relevant as whether it comes with a built-in washing machine.
No, she's all about the looks. And on first glance the GT just about has it nailed. Just about. There are a couple of things about the GT that just make you drool. The roofline, which sweeps backs from sharply angled windscreen in a delicate arc until it's curtailed by the sudden squat drop of the rear pillar. Good sports car design. long at the front, short at the back.
There's even an almost 1930s feel about the doors and windows. The doors are tall, the windows a strip of smoky glass wedged under that arcing roofline.
And the squatness of the rear is even better in three-quarter view. The rear-wheel arches flare satisfyingly from the car's waist, giving it the right kind of hip sway. And across a reasonably abrupt boot profile that shows simple strip lights, functional and without any interrupting influence. The reversing lights and other gubbins are tucked almost under the rear valance giving the GT a sly balance it might otherwise miss.
So it's pretty. Indeed, prettier than pictures allow. It's better in the flesh.
Inside? That's trickier. The dashboard is similar to the other models in Alfa's range, featuring that retro-styled triple barrel binnacle surrounded by a hideous expanse of black textured stuff that looks like it was designed by a Hollywood special effects studio as their idea of what the hide of Godzilla might look like. It's sort of matt and knobbly and just not very nice when used in such vast swathes.
But, the first GT handed over for testing came with an altogether more impressive feature. Leather. Everywhere. Acres of it, undulating savannahs of the stuff stitched to every available surface. It's brilliant.
As an option it'll probably cost you your firstborn, but look at your firstborn. He's only going to need a child seat and this ain't that kind of car.
Opt for the leather trim. It's just cool in a more than cool way. It's cool in a sort of Batman/worryingly fetishistic way, like that moment when Nicola Kidman sidles seductively up to Val Kilmer and his only response is "It's the car isn't it? Chicks dig the car". Apparently they do Val, and they'll dig the full leather interior a lot more than some vague approximation of what the backside of a 40-foot lizard looks like. Oh, and Alfa should include a sat nav that doesn't require an intimate knowledge of the guidance systems of space shuttles to operate.
First it sent me in completely the wrong direction and, once that had been sorted, it staunchly refused to accept any new destination, and required the intervention of a Alfa engineer. Later it spoke only in its mother tongue and then shut down completely. Very Italian. I next expected it to begin throwing plates at me and threatening me with return to its mama.
Driving? What's it like to drive. Fine. The short answer is fine. It does two Alfa things very well. Through a corner at a little more than is necessarily comfortable, the GT reassuringly sits down, looks into your eyes and says, "just give it a little more stick, everything's going to be all right". And it is. It has the balance and poise, the assured handling you'd expect from an Alfa.
On foggy, damp twisting, traffic snarled roads around Monaco it was hard to push the handling characteristics, but under such normal circumstances where once in every five corners you might be able to open up it did its job with admirable precision and most importantly with the sense that even more fun was possible.
The other thing it does very well, unfortunately, is perform as an introduction service to whatever union exists for chiropractors. It's a great, great shame to find myself saying that softening the ride of a sports car would be a good thing, but the unfortunate state of Irish roads will make the GT about as comfortable as Prince Charles at a convention of tabloid newspaper editors. The slightest pothole, the vaguest notion of a bit of gravel and the GT jumps on your spine like it's a WWF smackdown. If that can be sorted without compromising the handling unduly then, ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.
Ah, but what model? Petrol in 2.0 manual, 2.0 selespeed? Or what about a 3.2 V6 monster?
Or, and don't laugh, what about a 1.9 JTD 150 bhp diesel. You're laughing. But don't. It's good. Very good. Alfa call it multi-jet something or other, common-rail whatever, fuel under pressure. Trust me the science is boring. The effect isn't.
Here's a diesel that's fast. Here's a diesel that's surprisingly quiet. Here's a diesel that's not designed to make you run screaming to the hills in search of respite from its infernal clunking. It's bloody good. And a genuine option. It's not a joke or a gimmick or a get-out for cheapskates with no idea of what a sports car should be. The diesel is a runner.
Personally, being a luddite, I'm still clinging to petrol engines as the only true sports car power source. Even with the huge torque from the diesel, I was still unconvinced by the mid-range grunt of the M-Jet as they call it. The petrol still felt just slightly more alive, more responsive, more satisfying.
So what should my friend do? Well, if the GT is pitched in the right bracket, somewhere in the late-30s rising accordingly (if you're daft enough to want an all-singing, all dancing V6), then she should buy one.
It has style, it has grace. But mixed in with that is an aggressive stance that's hard to resist. It's refined enough to cruise around looking urban and stylish and chic, but it's capable of a healthy snarl, an anti-social bark that appears on empty, twisting roads at speed.
It's a very nice car.
But the price has to be right.