Growing up, I did my best to catch every touring car race that Speedvision showed. Family sedans wicked up into track monsters, driven by people who didn’t get a proper translation of “anger management course”? It was great entertainment, with drivers signaling to each other and bending fenders, but the cars really sucked me in. Basic sedans, just like what filled the parking lots, flying around at speed just seemed so wrong it was right. When I would see a Honda Accord, I’d imagine it in livery and suddenly, I could understand the fascination with a peaky four-banger four-door.
But for every car I knew (or, like the Ford Mondeo, what I could translate), there were always the forbidden fruit cars, like the Alfa Romeo 155. Even today, my only experience with anything Alfa involves the last dealership in Colorado Springs’ Motor City Drive area that was hanging on for dear life when my grandfather would take me car lot surfing in the late 1980s. But watching the 155 DTM being driven in full-on anger (in the case of Alessandro Nannini in 1994, genuine fury as he used the car to attack Roland Asch’s Mercedes) cemented these cars as the reason why Alfa people are so nuts for these cars. The touring car races made a more compelling argument than the Spyder convertibles sitting on the forlorn dealership’s lot, anyways.
Twenty-someting years after the racing ended, a 155 Ti is lapping in anger again, this time with Italian driver/YouTuber Davide Cironi behind the wheel. Cirioni’s insights into what the car is all about is unique, and while you have to read the subtitles to know what he’s saying, it’s worth it for his descriptive nature of a touring car beast!
Sheer awesomeness…but I might be biased.