Article content The Giulia takes its name from the Alfa Romeo Giulietta that preceded it, and while the old tale that both are inspired by Romeo and Juliet might just be a rumour, our star-cross’d sports sedan has, like the play, come to a sad end. As of the 2024 model year, the Giulia Quadrifoglio will be discontinued, though Stellantis execs haven hinted that some electrified version might be in the future. For now though, the Giulia QF is dead.
The audience at large is unlikely to shed as many tears as they might have at a Shakespearean tragedy. Not only are sport sedans a dwindling market compared to crossovers, sales-wise, but picking a high-performance Giulia over the likes of a BMW M3 or Mercedes-AMG C63 was also something of a risky choice. It was developed at breakneck pace, by industry standards, and perhaps because of this, early cars were plagued by faults.
Then again, having your heart broken by an Alfa Romeo is kinda part of the whole experience. On its debut for the 2017 model year, the Giulia Quadrifoglio also had a slight advantage, as it was pitched against the fifth-generation M3, a car that wasn’t quite as good as the Bavarian sport sedans that came before or after it. The Alfa put paid to its rivals in many a comparison test, then let down owners with frequent reliability issues.
Even though it appears that recent cars were more dependable, and that the four-cylinder version didn’t have quite the same teething troubles as the QF, picking a Giulia in 2024 is what the kids call “A Choice.” It’s approaching 10 years since it was first shown, and the German competition has moved on in terms of technology and performance. As Shakespeare pointed out, true love can come at great cost.
But love is what you’re supposed to get with an Alfa Romeo . It’s not the obvious cerebral choice, it’s the one you make with your heart. Love at first drive When he was a student at university, William Schmidt borrowed a friend’s Alfa Romeo for a drive.
“And that was it,” he laughs. Schmidt, a retired engineer who used to race at the now-defunct Westwood track in Coquitlam, British Columbia, has owned multiple Alfas over the years, and still has several. He’s had this 1964 Giulia Ti for ages, and it’s in wonderfully original condition.
The magic of a Giulia of this era is that it is not some high-strung thoroughbred, but a forthright and eminently pragmatic sedan. The earliest models came with bench seats and a column shifter, and boasted (theoretical) seating for six. In its day, you could have easily packed the entire family up for a day at the beach, and then driven there like your hair was on fire, in true Italian fashion.
There’s a delicacy to it — it is, after all, a 60-year-old automobile — but the Ti scoots along with traffic and is bright and airy inside, the way most 1960s machines are. It’s no wonder an ardent fan base sprung up around these cars: it’s nearly all the fun of the Duetto Spider from The Graduate , but practical. “Ti” stands for Turismo Internazionale , and before the Giulia came along, denoted the high-performance Alfa variants.
Here, however, it’s the standard 1.6L trim, and you need to step up to get a little more zip, to either a Ti Super sedan; or a Giulia Sprint GTV coupe (Schmidt also has one of the latter). We’ve tracked down one of those, too, a 1967 Sprint GTV, which shares those four-leaf-clover badges with the modern Giulia QF.
“GTV” stands for Gran Turismo Veloce , and as owner Adrian Burke spurs this little red coupe along a narrow section of the Sea-to-Sky, you can see why Alfa added the “Veloce.” Burke had to choose between keeping his beloved BMW 2002tii and this Alfa, and you’d have to think he made the best of a painful choice. He’s just completed a multi-day classic car rally, the annual Classic Car Adventures Spring Thaw, where it performed without a misstep.
It’s gorgeous from every angle, and quick without being a legal liability. Getting just what you asked for Climbing in between these classic Giulias and the modern one really underscores both the similarities and differences. Theoretically useful as a sedan, it is far more hemmed in than the original, bordering on downright cramped in the rear.
You can never shake off the feeling that this car would have been better as a coupe, especially with the forward placement of the B-pillars. Having said that, if you were an Alfa Romeo fan building a modern Giulia, it’s hard to see what you would change about the recipe for this car. Take one Ferrari-derived twin-turbo 2.
9L V6 (basically three-quarters of a F488 engine) and shoehorn it into a lively chassis that feels smaller than its rivals. Want all-wheel-drive instead of rear-drive only? Buy an Audi or the four-cylinder version. A manual transmission was an option in the European market, but here at least you get huge column-mounted paddle shifters as in a Lamborghini , cool to the touch when you rest your fingertips on them.
Actually, let’s talk about those paddle shifters more for a second, as they are a microcosm of the entire vehicle. The reason everyone else puts shifter paddles on the steering wheel is that you’re supposed to keep your hands at 9 and 3. The Giulia’s set-up can require a bit more thought depending how much steering angle you have cranked in, but it is much more of an event to engage a metal lever the size of Worf’s bat’leth to change gears rather than a glorified button.
It’s slightly less effective, but much more satisfying. Likewise, the rest of the complaints about the Giulia QF are basically disguised automotive enthusiast compliments. The infotainment touchscreen seems too small in a world where every car seemingly has an iPad nailed to the dashboard.
The suspension is stiff, transmitting every nuance of the road into your spine. Even just parking it causes the sticky tires to bind and scrub on the tarmac. In short: it’s fantastic.
And wait until you goose that throttle. Here, the only real problem is that the QF’s 505 hp is far too much even for attacking an on-ramp. Whisper it, but actually the 280-hp four-cylinder version might be the sweeter pick, even if it doesn’t have the trained-by-Pavarotti soundtrack of the Ferrari -derived V6.
As it is, the QF is ferociously quick, and the rear-wheel-drive-only setup requires you to use traditional driving skills rather than leaning on all-wheel-drive and torque-vectoring differentials. The available grip is tremendous, but that snarling V6 requires respect. From a luxury standpoint, this is not a car that cossets or flatters its driver.
I’m also confident that the most hardcore versions of the current M3 sedan will outperform the Giulia at a track. The BMW may not be pretty, with its gawping twin-kidney grille, but it is ruthlessly quick. Even so, and even though we all knew this was how things were going to end, it’s hard not to mourn the Giuila Quadrifoglio’s passing.
Alfa Romeo was never going to outcompete the entrenched German luxury brands on volume, and arguably it didn’t try. Instead, it built a car for the fans that were out there already, and in doing so, created a car that has a personality distinct from the more obvious choices. The last time the Giulia nameplate went dormant, it was gone for nearly 40 years.
We hope we won’t have to wait that long for the next one — by the standards of sales volume, its fate was perhaps always sealed. But, like the tale of Romeo and Juliet itself, the appeal of a sporty Alfa Romeo is something that doesn’t fade with time. Sign up for our newsletter Blind-Spot Monitor and follow our social channels on X , Tiktok and LinkedIn to stay up to date on the latest automotive news, reviews, car culture, and vehicle shopping advice.
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