Alfa Romeo Giulia GTA 2021 Review

More money, less weight is a common mantra for stripped-out, harder-edged versions of production sedans. But it’s usually not this much weight and it’s never this much money.

Limited to 18 units in Australia, all of which have been spoken for, the 2021 Alfa Romeo Giulia GTA will land in the fourth quarter of this year at $268,000 plus on-road costs. It’s track-focused GTAm brother will add $20,000 to that.

Let’s not beat around the bush here. That’s give-or-take double the price of an Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio Verde (from $138,950), for just 27kW more power – or even less in Australia, where protecting its innards from high-sulphur fuel sponges 5kW.

Double. The. Donor. Car.

But here’s the thing that shocked us: it’s worth it. Especially when you compare it to any other Alfa since, I dunno, 1975?

The GTAm is the heavier hitter and it’s a super-aggressive firecracker, able to fiddle its aero package to suit low-, medium- or high-speed lappery via a front splitter that adjusts in and out by 40mm and an outrageous, angle-adjustable rear wing.

Its roof, bonnet, front bumper, quarter panels, rear wheel-arches and the enormous, redesigned diffuser are all in carbon-fibre, while the rear windows and rear screen are in lightweight polycarbonate.

And any body panel that isn’t carbon-fibre is aluminium, saving 100kg all up and weighing in at 1540kg – or 147 fewer kilos than an Audi RS 5 and 170 fewer than either the BMW M3 Competition or the Mercedes-AMG C 63 S.

And unlike them, it’s rear-wheel drive, and only rear-wheel drive, all the time.

And that’s with the roll cage bolted in to stiffen things up, and a fire extinguisher atop the transmission tunnel ahead of where the rear seats would normally be. Because there aren’t any of those.

The inner door handles are replaced by (red) pull loops, the dash is coated in Alcantara and there is a six-point Sabelt harness for the track and a standard three-pointer for road use.

Meanwhile, the road-focused Giulia GTA gets all of those mechanicals, but softened off just a frag.

It does without the harnesses, the Lexan rear side windows (it keeps the rear screen) and the menacing aero tweaks, but it retains the powertrain, the purpose and the lightweight body panels, and it’s 100kg lighter than the donor Quadrifoglio Verde.

Besides the availability of retro racing designs for the cars, every GTA and GTAm buyer will receive a personalised helmet (with their car’s serial number), a Goodwool car cover and, for the GTAm buyers, a personalised Alpinestars race suit and kit.

Instead of blasting away in search of ultimate pace, the genius of the 2021 Alfa Romeo Giulia GTA is that the car-maker painstakingly examined ways to make its sports sedan more driveable at its limits, and then applied them perfectly.

It starts with the aerodynamics and the engine upgrade, adds muscle via the new exhaust and adds on a brilliant suspension set-up and a monster set of track-worthy brakes.

A huge part of that is the execution of the idea from Alfa and Michelin that the ability to dance on the very edge of adhesion is actually more useful than raising that limit a touch higher and making the car tricker to drive.

The new Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 rubber has two compounds mixed in, with the central part more of a harder, longitudinal technology and the shoulders reserved for extremes of grip.

It works beautifully in the real world and on the track, even in the wet, and the ability to make the car dance is at least in part to the rubber.

But the rubber has been custom-developed for the Giulia GTA, along with the fancy centre-locking wheels, and it all fits into the same organic, cohesive car.

There are all the standard Giulia safety devices, including active cruise control and lane departure warning and a flock of airbags.

It also retains the 8.8-inch multimedia system and, thankfully, its scrolling knob (so it’s not only touch-screen).

Alfa Romeo has divined an extra 27kW of power from the Ferrari-built 2.9-litre biturbo V6, taking it all the way up to 402kW before the Australian petrol police pull it back down to 397kW.

The torque is unchanged at 600Nm and the rev limit chimes in at 7200rpm, by which time the power delivery has tapered away anyway.

The work done to lift the performance of the 2021 Alfa Romeo Giulia GTA was more than just a trick titanium exhaust, though.

The 2.9-litre engine demanded new connecting rods inside, a new oil cooler, new oil injectors, new ball bearings for the turbocharger and, yes, the exhaust that demanded an all-new diffuser design.

The transmission is fairly simple in this day and age of on-demand all-wheel drive sports sedans. It’s a ZF-built eight-speed auto and an e-differential, controlled electronically, and it all scores new mapping to deliver the maximum performance to match the new suspension and tyre developments. Even the electro-mechanical steering system has had a remap.

The stance of the car is unambiguous, even in GTA form, with the rear tracks bulging so far out (50mm) that they needed their own add-on carbon-fibre wheel-arches, while the front track is 25mm wider.

There are new springs and electronic dampers for both the double-wishbone front-end and the multi-link rear, and everything has been tightened up and trimmed down, with even the front anti-roll bar hollowed out to reduce weight and add stiffness.

It has also become the first road-going sedan to use centre-locking wheel nuts on the custom forged 20-inch alloys, and the Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 rubber is 265/30ZR20 at the front and 285/30ZR20 at the back.

I go to every Alfa Romeo launch full of blind hope that the car justifies the passion fans have for the brand. And every time I’m disappointed when the car-maker hasn’t delivered. And usually it hasn’t.

Except this day.

Within metres it’s clear that the 2021 Alfa Romeo Giulia GTA is like no Alfa before it.

It’s essentially a collection of bolt-on parts, but they’ve been massaged into a form so coherent that I’ve never encountered it’s like before in an Alfa Romeo.

It’s brilliant. Nothing else out there manages to do what the Giulia GTA does. Nothing comes close to its driver involvement, or the nuance in its steering or the poise and controllability out of corner or the power of its brakes or the ability to change direction in a thought.

And yet, when the adrenaline fades away and the car is stuck in traffic, or driving slowly over broken roads, the Giulia GTA manages that with considerably more suppleness than the Quadrifoglio Verde, and with none of the choppiness the BMW M3 Competition has.

It’s a car to be driven and it will engage you whenever you drive it, whatever the conditions.

Even driven slowly, it has secrets to uncover. It has a separate mode to soften the dampers over rough going, for example, and its cruise control is simple and effective.

You could use it in everyday life and never be disappointed in its behaviour.

It’s engaging, but it’s never to the point of being tiring. It’s the sort of car you’d always use to pick up the milk and you’d have to drive it to a shop you’ve never been to before, even one several cities away.

The seats are taut and contoured in the GTA form, but still comfortable enough for daily use, and the V6 starts with a push of the steering wheel-mounted button.

And that engine is gruff. It’s a manly engine, even at idle, and it oozes muscle and confidence, though its core character is little changed.

There is torque to burn here, and the transmission does its best to keep things civilised by reaching for the tallest gears to keep the engine revs at their lowest. It can feel like it keeps the revs too low for quick throttle response, though, and it can make it seem sluggish when it isn’t.

But that’s in the normal mode. It’s a different world in the Dynamic mode.

When the transmission decides to allow more revs, the Giulia GTA reveals its true strength and the mid-range torque wave of 600Nm is worth the ride.

It loves hard work and the engine tone earns a tinny touch in its deep exhaust rasp as the revs climb and the car bursts out towards the horizon.

It pulls to 100km/h from standstill in 3.6 seconds (0.3s quicker than the Quadrifoglio Verde), to 200km/h in 11.8sec and runs on to 300km/h – we saw only 280km/h on the Balocco proving ground, but the Giulia GTA’s hunt for the horizon was undimmed.

The way the transmission works in its manual mode is a delight to match the muscular note from the engine, snapping through each upshift with a crack and blipping loudly down the gears again, and it’s ferociously quick doing it.

But the highlight is the suspension and the steering, both of which at last deliver every last scrap of information to the driver as though it came from a choir singing a songbook.

Alfa Formula 1 drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi were allegedly brought in to help with the dynamic development. They always say that, though. Whoever it actually was knew what they were doing.

There is a wonderfully fluid consistency to the way the Giulia GTA goes about its cornering work, and it’s impossible to fluster. On a flat test track or a lumpy, narrow mountain pass, the Giulia GTA feels tied down and firm, but not uncomfortable, even when immense amounts of energy are pulsing through its tyres.

Throw whatever you like at it, the Giulia GTA will rise to the challenge and make its driver feel like a superstar at the same time.

The body is flat on cornering, with a tiny trace of body roll on to the outside rear wheel, but then it dances and eases its way to the apex and beyond, and you never feel like you need to work up to its limits. It just asks you to throw it in and trust it.

The GTAm is the same, but more. More everything. More speed in corners, more aggression and more noise. You couldn’t live with a GTAm every day, though. It’s too loud and too aggressive.

But it is better, without ever losing the philosophy. It just feels like the stock Giulia GTA has had an upgrade, which it has. It’s pointier at the front, more stable in high-speed cornering and braking and better to get out of corners.

It rotates the rear-end in a perfectly measured dance, keeping the nose pointed in the right direction even as the tail can wander under hard power-down. It’s lovely.

The brakes are immense, both in size and power. The carbon-ceramic Brembos are 390mm up front, with monobloc six-piston callipers, and 360mm (with four-piston callipers) at the rear, and they eat kinetic energy like it’s chocolate.

The pedal remains high and firm, even with monstrous abuse from behind 270km/h, and they are even easy to modulate in urban conditions.

Alfa says the Giulia GTA is three seconds quicker than the Quadrifoglio on this track, and the GTAm is 4.1sec quicker. It’s the same wherever they take them.

The GTA is 3.48sec faster on the Nardo handling circuit and the GTAm is 4.7sec faster. At Vallelunga, the GTA slices 2.15sec from the Quadrifoglio and the GTAm takes 2.95.

The 2021 Alfa Romeo Giulia GTA and GTAm have shocked us because after all the broken promises and unfulfilled five-year plans, Alfa has just delivered a car that is perfectly – PERFECTLY – on point.

It’s a modern interpretation of the best of Alfa Romeo’s history. And it’s very possibly the best road-registered Alfa Romeo ever built.

For everybody who has loved the Alfa Romeo brand, but was constantly disappointed with the product it designed and built, the reward for your loyalty is finally here. Here is your Alfa to love on merit, not on passion.

People have loved the Alfa brand so much that it only had to offer a credible alternative to the Germans, rather than beating them, to survive and thrive, but Alfa could never even reach to “credible alternative”.

But the Giulia GTA has overshot. It’s a far better car than ANY of the German combustion-powered sedan options.

It’s worth all the money just to see an Alfa Romeo finally being everything an Alfa Romeo has promised to be.

It’s worth it to see an Italian car out-muscle AMG, BMW M and Audi Sport and build on its Italian passion at the same time.

It’s a car full of joy, brimming with obvious engineering expertise and the unmistakeable sense of shackles released.

It’s the best car Alfa Romeo has ever made. Ever.

How much does the 2021 Alfa Romeo Giulia GTA cost?
Price: $268,000 (plus on-road costs), $288,000 (plus ORCs, GTAm)
Available: Fourth quarter 2021
Engine: 2.9-litre V6 twin-turbo petrol
Output: 397kW/600Nm
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Fuel: 10.8L/100km (WLTP)
CO2: 244g/km (WLTP)
Safety rating: Five-star (ANCAP 2016)