I've long thought that the Alfa 156, in either saloon or estate version, was one of the prettiest cars on the road. Apparently, I'm not the only one: since its 1997 launch, the 156 has won Car of the Year and went on to become a bestseller in the UK - a country traditionally suspicious of pretty Italian cars that would start rusting as soon as they heard a British weather forecast, and which had an alarming tendency for bits to come away in your hands.
Having seemingly conquered the quality management issue, Alfa Romeo - always one of the most romantic names in motoring, with a sporting heritage every bit as long as the more prestigious marque of Ferrari - has now set about tweaking the 156 to give it BMW-rivalling performance. The previous top-of-the-range Alfa closely matched the quickest 3-series car. Now, with this 250-horsepower GTA, Alfa has trumped everything the Bavarians have got (barring the mighty M3).
The first thing you notice is the bodykit. It certainly gives the car a more purposeful look; I'm not sure if you'd still call it pretty. It might get up and punch you.
Gone is the overbite at the front of the old 156: a deeper, lower air dam gives the car a kind of Kirk Douglas jawline. Then there are the side-skirts, but again, you won't want to call them that in the car's hearing (talk admiringly about the big alloy wheels and red-painted Brembo brake callipers instead).
The seats hug your tush and thighs in such a way that you start to hope there will be some shoehorn-type implement to get you out again. The "A" of GTA stands, apparently, for "alleggerita", meaning lightened, the term first used in Alfa's touring-car racers of the sixties. (I'd thought it must stand for "allegro", for that is how this instrument demands to be played.)
To park yourself in this GTA, though, is to feel an implicit reproach - whatever the Italian is for "Blimey, who ate all the pies?" springs to mind. It must be still more disconcerting if you are female and had assumed that bottom-pinching was a practice now found only in kitsch seaside postcards.
For, make no mistake, this Alfa is an old-fashioned macho car: an unreconstructed, testosterone-snorting Italian stallion. If it were a character in The Sopranos, "GTA" would be the guy who pistol-whips a hapless New Jerseyite for taking his parking space and then dusts off the sleeve of his Park Avenue suit, straightens his hair and walks his waiting blonde girlfriend into the swank restaurant.
Since we're dealing in stereotypes, you have to wonder who this car's implied driver is. Seeing as it's an estate (albeit cunningly disguised as a "Sportwagon"), you might reasonably pause to consider what kind of family would want a car that goes like a pumped-up go-kart. You can imagine Homer Simpson at the wheel, actually. But, then again, there's no sunroof for Marge's hair.
The old 2.5-litre V6 was no slouch, but this bored-out, tuned-up 3.2 V6 version is truly hardcore. The GTA's ride is so firm, the velocities and vectors of which it is temptingly capable so extreme, that any outing is like being put in the world's sportiest designer cocktail maker. The driver is stirred, for sure, but the passengers arrive distinctly shaken.
To see why, you have to peek under the bonnet. Most lumps are, well, exactly that; but this V6 is a thing of beauty, a piece of industrial sculpture in aluminium and chrome. That's Italian design - even the typography on the milled block is gorgeous.
I suspect the soundproofing from the engine bay was deliberately moderated, so the driver can hear all the action under the bonnet. The car's Bose sound system comes complete with a subwoofer, but it's the engine that does all the barking. More animal impressions, in fact, than Johnny Morris - growls, grunts, woofles, whistles, purrs and howls. Vivaldi it ain't, but as soundtracks go, it has a certain brutal charm.
To be fair, the GTA has finesse aplenty, as well as power. The steering is amazingly quick and responsive. And, for a front-wheel-drive car, its handling is sublime. The suspension uses double wishbones. I thought these were something you only found in genetically modified chickens, so I can't begin to explain how they work. Let's just say it enables our Alfa to get off the line with unseemly haste - and without torque-steering itself into the opposite lane.
Wicked acceleration, of course, must be matched by virtuous deceleration. The brakes are strong and tireless, but so much so that the car seems to reach the limits of its grip surprisingly early, tyres chirruping and protesting, especially over uneven tarmac. While I'm finding fault, the gear shift is clunkier and more gated than in previous 156s. No doubt it needed beefing up so that the transmission could cope with the extra power, but I missed its former silky action.
Nor is it easy to love the acreage of textured black plastic that characterises the interior, but it's pretty much what you expect in a 21st- century motor. And, in that sense, it's invisible - much like the vast array of abbreviations and acronyms that help you keep the car on the road. ABS is strictly for paupers these days; this Alfa GTA has more three- letter acronyms than your average teenager's text message: VDC, HBA, ASR and AQS (believe me, you don't need to know).
My favourite feature of the 156, though, is its ABD. That's for Anti-Backseat Driving. OK, I made that one up. But it's very simple: all the instruments are deeply cowled in such a way that only the driver can read them. So your passenger has no idea how fast you're going. Until you have to stop, that is, when the reappearance of their lunch on the faux-rhino hide fascia alerts them.
