Alfa Romeo 2.0 Giulia Competizione review: a sedan update done right

Apparently the new Alfa Romeo you see before you is available as a NFT. That nonsense aside, it is playful and fun, and a quite brilliant sports sedan.

The Alfa Romeo 2.0 Giulia Competizione is a genuine and quite brilliant sports saloon, writes Jeremy Clarkson.

Apparently the new Alfa Romeo you see before you is available as a non-fungible token. Or with a non-fungible token. Or on the back of one. All of which begs a question: what exactly is a non-fungible token?

In my mind, the answer has ­always been simple. You pay for something that doesn’t exist, and in return, you get nothing at all apart from an email saying you own the thing that doesn’t exist.

So this is how the conversation goes when you get home from the art gallery.

“Hi, darling. I’ve just bought a Tracey Emin drawing.”

“Have you?”

“No.”

Non-fungible tokens are nonsense. And it seems I’m not the only one to have arrived at this conclusion, because last year the NFT market lost 90 per cent of its value as everyone wised up to the fact that if you buy a painting that hasn’t been painted, you haven’t bought a painting.

So what the bloody hell is Alfa Romeo on about? I don’t have a clue. It’s something to do with being able to keep track of your car’s service records. But we are talking here about a company that historically has been unable to wire up a car’s indicators properly, so God knows how it thinks it can keep electronic tabs on every car it makes. You’d be better off, I reckon, writing everything down in a service book.

So having dealt with that, let’s move on to something that Alfa Romeo is historically good at: making cars that enthusiastic drivers like me would want to buy. And straight away I’m going to say it has done it again. And then some.

There has always been a small problem with the normal Giulia saloon. If you bought one, what you were actually saying was, “I wanted the range-topping Quadrifoglio model. I wanted the 191mph (307kph) thunder. The monster with the Ferrari-derived twin-turbo V6. But I couldn’t afford it.”

Alfa has just spruced up the ordinary Giulias so they don’t seem so anaemic when viewed alongside the big bad quad. And to see what’s what, I’ve just spent the week with the Competizione version.

In just four years’ time, all Alfas will be electric, so it was never going to spend a fortune massively overhauling the current range. That’s why there are no big changes. You get new headlights, a few trim changes and a new paint option.

Inside there’s a new electronic dash, which works pretty well, and, as we’ve come to expect from all modern cars, a vast range of electronic bongs and beeps that sound very often and for no particular reason. Mercifully you can turn most of these off if you have a ­degree in computer engineering and an hour to spare.

Underneath, all is as it was. There’s a two-litre turbo engine that sends all of its 276 horsepowers down a carbon-fibre prop shaft to the rear wheels. There’s a 50-50 weight distribution, an eight-speed ZF gearbox and a mechanical limited-slip diff, so you’re thinking, “But it’s still not the real deal, is it?”

Yes. It isn’t. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s a lightness to the way this car operates. It seems to float and dance like it’s at the ballet. It’s fast too. So fast that I really did begin to wonder on a couple of occasions if I would choose the V6 instead.

This is not a pale and shy version of the Quadrifoglio. It feels like it’s a completely different car. Where the V6 kicks butt and smashes heads, this is playful and fun. It’s a genuine and quite brilliant sports saloon. And it’s more than $38,000 cheaper.

What is relevant is that I do genuinely believe you could buy a Competizione and convince your friends that you didn’t actually want the V6, that you preferred the nimbleness of the smaller-engined car and that money had nothing to do with it.

And that brings me on to what perhaps is the most important question when talking about a midsize two-litre saloon car. Wouldn’t you really, all things considered, be better off with a BMW 320? It’s good-looking, beautiful to drive, extremely well made and fantastic in every way. All true, but let’s just imagine you’re at a party and someone asks you what you’re driving these days. Which answer would you rather give? BMW? Or Alfa Romeo?

Or a non-fungible Ferrari that has space guns?

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Alfa Romeo 2.0 Giulia Competizione

ENGINE: 1995cc, four cylinders, turbo, petrol
FUEL ECONOMY: 6.1 litres per 100km
PRICE: from $99,500
RATING: 4 stars out of 5