Hollis Johnson/Business Insider
An Italian in New York.
- The Alfa Romeo Giulia that I tested is a four-cylinder version of the more powerful V6 Quadrifoglio trim I sampled last year.
- The Giulia is Alfa's bid to compete in the US luxury sport sedan market, taking on the likes of BMW, Audi, and Mercedes.
- The Giulia offers a distinctive, stylish, and appealing take on the luxury four-door - and it's really quick!
The name "Giulia" means "youth" in Italian, but the legendary auto vehicles from Alfa Romeo that carry it are anything but: the moniker dates to the early 1960s and was born by some of the loveliest, peppiest little rides this side of Turin.
It therefore made perfect sense that when Alfa commenced its return to the US market a few years back, it returned to the Giulia's heritage for a sedan to take on the best from BMW, Mercedes, and Audi.
In 2017, the high-performance version of the Giulia, the Quadrifoglio, was a Business Insider Car of the Year finalist. But it was also nearly $80,000 (worth every lira, if you ask me).
It isn't the only Giulia in town, of course. I recently sampled a 2018 Giulia TI Lusso, stickering at $52,090 (base is about $41,000). It did not come with the Giulia Quad's 2.9-liter, 505-horsepower twin-turbo V-6, effectively a Ferrari V-8 with two cylinders lopped off. Instead, it was motivated by 2.0-liter, 280-horsepower inline four, with but a single turbocharger.
In my experience, it can be tricky to move down to reviewing a less ambitious trim level of a car intended to fire the enthusiast's senses after hitting the road in the brawnier spec. In the case of the Giulia, however, I went into the process with a thematic expectation: the Quadrifoglio was power, but I assumed the four-banger would be finesse.
Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding! I was correct! So much so that driving the four-cylinder G after the Quad amounted to piloting a completely different car. Good different, ultimately. But different, all the same.
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