Alfa unveils glorious Cuorerosso in Paris

Hold on; what does ‘Cuorerosso’ mean?

Red Heart. It’s one of those wonderful words that sounds like pure liquid in Italian and then has a stultifyingly prosaic English name. Get ready for more of that, by the way, as Alfa’s PR team has gone into full florid mode in writing up the press release for the Cuorerosso. Some of it was verging on the gibberish.

Is the car going to make production?

Ah. Right. Sort of… indifferent news here. Alfa opens by saying the Cuorerosso is “neither an anticipation of a production model nor a mere exercise in style”. Which we guess is the Italian printed version of shrugging shoulders.

The long and short of this is that while something as magnificent as the Cuorerosso specifically might not make showrooms, there’s clearly a lot of actual chassis and drivetrain tech under the concept car that could.

Including the majestic powertrain from Alfa’s Quadrifoglio models: the 2.9-litre, biturbo V6. Only hybridised.

Colour me interested. And speaking of colour…

Yes, red. Lots and lots of red. Italy views this colour as a symbol of performance and passion, two values intrinsic to Alfa’s history.

The paint clothing that sensuous GT body on the Cuorerosso is called Liquid Ink Red, a shifting shade that draws its chameleonic properties from the use of a fine-aluminium base and a coloured transparent top layer.

And the interior? So. Much. Red. Frankly, we adore it.

Right, get onto some of the details, then

Ready for some more Italian-to-English translations? Hold these phrases in your head: Bellezza Necessaria; Coda Trunca; and Cannocchiale Vivente.

Starting with the first of these, it means ‘necessary beauty’. It refers to that fabulous bodywork, which measures 4,700mm long, 1,980mm wide, 1,331mm tall and has a wheelbase (stretch between the axles) of 2,930mm.

Those figures by Alfa Romeo, by the way, are weirdly specific for a mere concept car and, along with a stated kerb weight of 1,750kg (light, for a car of this size), suggest the Cuorerosso might not be as much of a production-ready impossibility as Alfa Romeo would have us believe.

And they also ensure the Cuorerosso is physically bigger in every way than the Alfa 8C Competizione, save for height – where it’s lower – while eclipsing the modern-era 33 Stradale too. We’ll come back to this.

The company says the Centro Stile moved from the initial sketches of the Cuorerosso to a three-dimensional model in a matter of only weeks. The idea was to make the car look like it had been hewn from a single solid block.

Or, in Alfa’s own verbose words: “The result is a living, monolithic, continuous sculpture, whose surfaces seem to merge like liquid metal and accompany the gaze uninterrupted along the car’s entire body, conveying a feeling of movement and dynamism even when stationary.”

Garrulous. You mentioned a V6 earlier…

Yes. This 2+2 coupe concept is not just an EV, with four-figure power and torque figures, and a 0-100km/h time in the organ-distorting zone.

It is aerodynamic, mind, cleaving through the air cleanly with a 0.28 coefficient-of-drag figure. That’s in part thanks to the Coda Trunca (‘truncated tail’ – you’re welcome), one of the hallmark features of the Cuorerosso.

But aside from light-up triangular sections in the front grille, and a dead-on rear view that looks like an angry owl, the Alfa concept sits on forged ‘Teledial’ alloys, behind which sit Brembo carbon-ceramic brakes. Tasty.

And if we move inside, via four opening doors with back-hinged rear ‘suicide’ items for maximum kerb appeal, then it’s time for our last translation: Cannocchiale Vivente, or ‘living telescope’.

Ahead of superb, slender bucket seats and behind the flattened wheel-cum-yoke-thing controlling a steer-by-wire system are two dials in a dashboard inspired by that aforementioned Alfa 33 Stradale (only this time, the 1967 original, not the modern reinterpretation).

In regular ‘Immersivo’ mode, these stay as two separate elements. Yet in the ‘Concentrato’ setting, the two dials physically merge into one and display a more tightly focused set of data, all centred on driving engagement.

Also, look closely at the images – you’ll see a rev counter displayed.

This, along with three drive programmes called Cruise, Sport and Quadrifoglio, links with Alfa explicitly saying the Cuorerosso previews a multi-energy approach from the company moving into the future.

So along with full electric, plug-in-hybrid and mild-hybrid solutions, Alfa invites us to imagine the GT’s performance with a 2.9-litre V6 hybrid powertrain, paired with Q4 all-wheel drive and a carbon-fibre drive shaft. We’re drooling at the mere thought of it.

This sounds amazing. Anything else to add?

Just this little gem from the Italian firm itself, promising to uphold its corporate values for decades to come: “In the future too, Alfa Romeo will continue to create cars for those who love to drive, putting innovation and performance at people’s service to transform every journey into driving pleasure, engagement and emotion, regardless of the technical solution adopted.”

And what do you think of the Cuorerosso?

Well, as you might be able to work out by the superlatives dotted throughout this piece, we think it’s fantastic. But it needs to lead to something tangible from Alfa.

Too often we’ve been promised cars from this marque which will revive its golden years of success, then been left disappointed.

The Giulia and Stelvio Quadrifofglio models went a long way to redressing a lot of that enthusiast imbalance, of course, but with their platform now firmly put in the recycling bin by Alfa’s parent conglomerate Stellantis, the Milanese outfit needs more than some hastily rebodied Jeeps to keep its petrolhead legacy going into the 2030s and beyond.

Here’s hoping the Cuorerosso, or something very, very like it, will prove to be ‘it’.