We know that Nurburgring lap times are essentially a gigantic measuring contest for the world’s manufacturers and don’t mean jack squat to all but the hardest of the hardcore racer owners (which compose approximately .001% of the normal buying public) but hey…when you’ve got it, you whip that sucker out and you flaunt it, and that’s precisely what Alfa Romeo is doing with the 505-horsepower Guilia Quadrifoligo’s 7:32 lap of the Green Hell.
With driver Fabio Francia wheeling the Guilia around in jeans and a t-shirt, the Alfa screams, darts and dances it’s way through the track, with all 171 cubic inches of pissed-off, force-fed V6 screaming like an Italian-designed engine should. And it had better, because there is more than a little allusion to Ferrari tech…in short hand, it’s a six-cylinder version of the V8 that powers the 488GTB. Yeah, that’s not a bad deal. The eight-speed manu-matic looks like it plays nice, though the six-speed manual is still the more tempting offer. But whatever…lap times and what we can tell from a video are nice, and Francia is doing a hell of a job driving his ass off, but the Guilia means more than just another FCA product. The rumor mill might be a touch unreliable, but it’s been known for a while that the Charger and Challenger are going to jump to an Alfa Romeo platform that is commonly referred to as “Giorgio”. If Alfa presence in Mopar products is to be accepted, they had better work, and from what we see, call us cautiously optimistic. If the rumors of a twin-turbocharged, 400 horsepower Pentastar-based V6 come to life, we could be seeing the dawn of the fuel-friendly muscle car.
Click play below and make a judgement call for yourself!
An Alfa Romeo Giul – Goo – Gull – its easy for you to say!
Quite fitting that there is some Ferrari input into the motor as Enzo Ferrari cut his teeth running a team of Alfas. Beautiful beyond words and not a bit of a FIAT Punto in sight!