Meatball Thunder Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio

Passion is a strange thing. Just see the mark of something you love and it changes everything: love can change the perspective of what you already know.

We live in a world of contrasts. We live in a (supposedly) consumer conscious world, where everything needs to be eco friendly and pollute less and less, yet…SUV’s have been the most popular type of vehicles on the planet for the last 20 years.

They’re the backbone of almost any manufacturer, and they have a weight on the market that sportscars can only dream of.

SUV’s have always represented what all true petrolheads hate: pretentious, useless, fat and too overweight for proper fun. They’re the ebodyment of what we do not like in a “sense-of-occasion” motorcar.
Interestingly enough, it was the “sportiest” manufacturers that started the 4×4 revolution: BMW acquired Land Rover in the 90ies and giving birth to the X5 was only the beginning. In 3 years, Alfa Romeo, Maserati and Porsche presented their own prototypes, shooting for success. No, that is not a mistake: Alfa and Maserati were there too, before the Cayenne and almost everybody else. Too bad that the management never wanted to invest in clever projects such as the Kamal and the Burang.

For years the throne of “best handling suv” belonged to the ubiquitous Cayenne, but things have now changed.

20 years after the initial concept, Alfa is finally in the business and they’ve done something great. Besides being fast, it really handles. And by that we do not mean F150-Raptor-style-handling, but we mean actual purebred-Alfa-Romeo-handling.

It is the kind of car you want to hate, but you just can’t. It’s an Alfa. You cannot hate it. No. And it works beautifully: power is endless, cornering is proper fun and it is truly the “do-it-all” kind of vehicle. Unapologetically gorgeous and effective, it is a real game changer.

It is what all other suv’s are not: it offers surgical precision and ludicrous exhilaration, and it is what petrolheads truly want! It seems that we truly needed Alfa to make things just a little more exciting than usual!

Driving an Alfa Stelvio in the US is special: it’s a true piece (and a pretty big one, I’d say) of Italian culture. Always remember: before Ferrari there was Alfa: suv or front wheel drive, these guys still know how to make a proper motorcar.