Alfa Romeo was supposed to be the Italian answer to BMW and Mercedes. The passionate underdog with a racing soul that would waltz into the premium segment and remind the Germans that engineering isn’t everything, style and soul count too. That was the plan, at least.
While BMW and Mercedes each moved well over two million units worldwide last year, Alfa Romeo’s much-celebrated 20% sales surge landed the brand at roughly 73,000 global deliveries. Even Porsche,selling cars that cost as much as a small apartment in Milan, pushed nearly 280,000 units, and that wasn’t even a good year for Stuttgart.
The lineup tells the story clearly enough. The Giulia sedan and Stelvio SUV are aging gracefully, which is a polite way of saying nobody at Stellantis seems particularly eager to replace them. The Tonale just got a facelift, and the baby Junior crossover is, almost single-handedly, responsible for whatever growth the brand can claim. One model carrying the weight of an entire brand’s revival is not a strategy.
So, with the factory busy and the boardroom apparently distracted, the digital dreamers have stepped in. Davide Dessì, a Turin-based virtual car designer known online as desicardesign, has conjured up something Alfa Romeo’s own product planners seem too cautious to attempt: the Alfa Romeo Zagato TZ Lunga, a CGI grand tourer that pulls from one of the most storied partnerships in automotive history.
Alfa Romeo and Zagato go back to 1921, before most car brands even existed, and their collaboration has produced some of the most visually arresting machines ever built. Their latest real-world chapter, the one-off 8C DoppiaCoda unveiled last year, proved the chemistry is still very much alive. Dessì’s digital TZ Lunga runs with that energy: smaller and more agile than the 33 Stradale, but unmistakably a GT, complete with a long hood, a ducktail rear, and a front end that looks like it means business.
Is it going to happen? Almost certainly not. But it absolutely should, because right now, Alfa Romeo needs a halo car with a combustion engine and a Zagato badge far more than it needs another corporate crossover with a Italian name.
