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Alfa Bravo
2 days ago
Huge rear spoiler is the GTAm's most obvious visual signature
Expectations were in the basement: Alfa had cried wolf one too many times and I was seemingly in a minority of one among the motoring press who didn’t much like the Giulia Quadrifoglio from which it was derived. The fact this four-door saloon had just two seats struck me as silly and, to cap it all, it cost more than a Porsche 911 GT3. Yes, it was rare, a total production run of just 500 cars split apparently almost equally between the more practical, less bonkers GTA and the GTAm, but that wouldn’t help the way it drove, which was all that mattered to me.
One of my biggest fears was that it would besmirch the reputation of the original Giulia GTAm, which won the European Touring Car Championship in 1971 and 1972. I once did the Spa Six Hours in a GTA Junior that had been brought up to GTAm spec in period by Alfa’s Autodelta race team, complete with brilliant sliding block rear suspension and an incredibly rare 16-valve version of the 2-litre twin-cam motor reputedly good for 240bhp. It remains one of the sweetest cars it has been my fortune to race.
We had some fearsome stuff on Anglesey – a brand new Porsche 911 GT3, Ferrari SF90 Assetto Fiorano, an Ariel Atom 4 and a Lamborghini Huracan STO to mention merely the most memorable. And guess what? The Alfa beat the lot. Okay, I made that up, but it did come fourth behind the Porsche, Atom and Ferrari, beating the Lambo and the likes of the Aston Martin Vantage F1 Edition, Caterham 170R and a BMW M4 Competition. On the road it was one single point (out of 25) behind the Porsche and Atom and matched the Ferrari. And had it not ruined its tyres and overheated its diff because none of us was grown up enough to drive it anything other than as sideways as we could (which is very), it would have been right up there on the track component too. I was stunned. So stunned indeed that, come the Christmas issue, I named it my own personal car of the year.
"Even Max will have to up his game before he reaches Nick Mason level, who once turned up at drop off in a 250 GTO"
Five years later and I am driving Max Girardo’s own personal GTAm, in which he has just returned from doing the school run. What a fabulously cool thing for a kid to arrive in, though even Max will have to up his game before he reaches Nick Mason level, who once turned up at drop off in a 250 GTO.
I’m usually quite good at remembering the specs of cars I really liked, but so extensive are the modifications that made the GTAm what it is, I felt the need to refresh my memory. Both the five-seat GTA and GTAm received a 30bhp power boost to 532bhp, courtesy of lighter conrods, better fueling and additional turbo boost. The exhaust therefrom was spat out the back via Akrapovic pipes. The eight-speed automatic gearbox received some software updates to sharpen it up but was otherwise left untouched.
The chassis received greater attention, most fundamentally a track extension of 25mm at the front and fully 50mm at the rear. To go with that came new lightweight springs, dampers and bushes, a lowered ride height and Brembo carbon ceramic brakes as large as would fit behind a new centre-lock, forged 20in wheel rim, 390mm no less at the front. Both cars came on Michelin Cup 2 rubber as standard, a 265/30 section at the front, 285/30s at the back.
“Despite the additional mass of the roll cage, Alfa claimed the GTAm to be 40kg lighter than the GTA, at 1580kg, which only sounds heavy until you consider a modern BMW M3 saloon weighs 1865kg”
The bonnet, flared wings and boot of both cars are made from carbon fibre, claimed alongside the brakes and wheels to drop the weight of even the GTA by 100kg relative to the standard Quadrifoglio. And there the GTA stops. The GTAm however…
That bins the GTA’s modest rear wing and front air dam in favour of monstrous and adjustable spoilers front and back. Inside the rear seats are replaced by a half cage with a fire extinguisher chucked in for good measure, the front chairs and seat belts with carbon buckets and race harnesses. The rear and side windows are polycarbonate too. So despite the additional mass of the cage, Alfa claimed the GTAm to be 40kg lighter than the GTA, at 1580kg, which only sounds heavy until you consider a modern BMW M3 saloon weighs 1865kg.
I wish more manufacturers would realise just how important to your overall sense of wellbeing with a car is the seat in which you seat. It is the only part of the car in which large swathes of your body are in permanent contact, millions of nerve-endings all contributing to a constant data stream to your brain. I wish also that they’d realise a well-designed bucket is not only more supportive than a padded seat, it can also be more comfortable over a long distance, and provide a stack more legroom both in the front and for rear seat passengers, were this car actually able to carry them. The GTAm’s seats are perfect.
Of the 500 cars, only 19 came to the UK
The 2.9-litre V6 barks into life, sounding precisely like that in the Quadrifoglio I recently ran for a month and none the worse for that. The interior is very little different and it looked old when it was new, but perhaps we won’t let that trouble us today.
Some cars have a way of letting you know they’re different, even within the very first mile. It’s the way they address the road. The BMW M5 CS I’m using as my daily does it, and so does the GTAm. I don’t really know what it is, other than the sense of a car being unusually well planted, but I suspect it comes from a rather differently proportioned damper budget compared to the standard cars from which they’re derived.
And you might think this sense of the car being welded to the road could only come at the price of the kind of ride quality that gives you double vision, but it doesn’t. I think most of us would have forgiven Alfa for really tying the GTAm down on its springs, but it’s not. Despite all the whizz-bangery that turned the Quadrifoglio into the GTAm, I’d say it rides at least as well, if not better. Woe betide anyone who thinks firmer necessarily means harsher. In an instant I can see why Max uses it as his daily driver.
But like so many Italian cars, Max’s Ferrari Daytona probably being the best example, it just keeps on getting better the faster you go. At low speeds the steering feels overly direct, a little too light, a touch too aggressive off-centre; likewise the limitations of the gearbox, which is good for an auto but not a patch on a dual-clutch. It is only when you find some space and gather some speed that this collection of broadly impressive components really starts to knit together into a thorough cohesive whole. And then? Wow.
Alfa Romeo, where have you been all this time? It’s not just that the GTAm is bloody rapid across the ground, though it is sufficiently so to tempt you look behind you to confirm that this is indeed a four-door saloon you’re driving, it’s the poise and balance, and they way they conspire to give you confidence, to involve you in the experience, to make you want to push harder and harder.
This is what an Alfa should be. Drive a 1954, 1.3-litre Giulietta and I promise you’ll find the same eagerness, that same sense that you’re in it together. It’s so much more important than power, performance or grip, particularly today when so many cars have so much of all three they cannot be deployed on the public road.
"It’s a very old car now, in its 11th season on sale and not being electric is perhaps not quite enough to see it through. What it needs is a little stardust, and what better than a GTAm Evo?"
So it comes down to that interaction between the machine and its driver, this and the fact it doesn’t get to a certain point and just give up. I can remember the 8C – not a true Alfa, I know – was great up until you gave it proper work to do, and thereafter started to feel a little slow-witted and stodgy, just like the Maserati from which it was derived. The GTAm never does. This being Max’s car I wasn’t about to start drifting it on the public road – but at the point I felt I was driving it as quickly as was safe and responsible, it was still getting better.
I remember this from five years ago: having a ball in the thing on the road, then getting it to the track and finding the fun only ran out when you ran out of opposite lock which, thankfully, I never did.
I wonder, then, whether it is time to do another. The Giulia was due to die this year, to be replaced by an all-new electric car based on a Stellantis platform, but that has now been shelved and the Giulia lives on. But it’s a very old car now, in its 11th season on sale and not being electric is perhaps not quite enough to see it through. What it needs is a little stardust sprinkled on the range, and what better than a GTAm Evo? Imagine another limited run, but with a touch more power – even in the GTAm the engine’s specific output is scarcely breaking records – even less weight, a more radical aero package and, if I may briefly enter dreamland, a manual gearbox. I think they could put a really big ticket in the windscreen and a car like that would still sell out in minutes.
Because people still want Alfas. Or at least good Alfas. Despite all the disappointment, the brand built up so much equity in the middle years of the last century that much still remains, alongside the goodwill that goes with it. And this is not just a good Alfa, but a superb Alfa, which is why its value has not only held steady, but risen – prices most regularly quoted tend to be either side of the £200,000 mark according to spec and history. The fact only 19 cars came to the UK (of which just eight remained licenced last year) probably helps too…
Would I have one, if I could afford it? If I could return the rear seats to their rightful place and give up the roll cage to make space and save weight? As part of a multi-car collection? I think I probably would. It’d be worth it for the school run alone.
Photography by Dean Smith
