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<\/p>\n<\/div>How do you make an Alfa Romeo SUV? Take a road-carving Alfa Giulia sedan, jack it up 21\/2 inches, bolt in all-wheel drive, and the next thing you know you\u2019re hounding sports cars through Hell, Michigan\u2019s twisted back roads.<\/p>\n
Say hello to Stelvio, the latest performance car in crossover clothing.<\/p>\n
With the SUV trend here to stay, performance brands like Alfa need to adapt to market demand. But that doesn\u2019t mean they need sacrifice who they are. Indeed, sports car manufacturers like Alfa, Jaguar, Porsche and Mazda are leading an SUV revolution that is blurring the line between sedan and ute.<\/p>\n
Porsche saw the opening first with its Cayenne and Macan crossovers channeling the brand\u2019s racing DNA to make the best-handling small trucks ever built. Alfa and Jaguar have taken the formula a step further by building their midsize Stelvio and F-Pace SUVs on the same bones as their performance sedans (Giulia and XE, respectively). For their next act may I suggest building Alfa\u2019s compact crossover on the 4C sports car\u2019s carbon-fiber tub? Or Jaguar\u2019s compact E-PACE on the F-Type\u2019s aluminum spine?<\/p>\n
With the Stelvio, Alfa has not only crafted a performance vehicle with five-door utility (in the old days we would have called it a sporty station wagon), but it has made it affordable. In the sweet spot of the mid-size luxury sport utility market, the Stelvio brings $50,000 Macan handling for just $43,000 \u2014 with more horsepower, more features and more utility. Who says you can\u2019t have your cake and eat it, too?<\/p>\n
Your fearless critic tested Stelvio through gnarled mountain roads southeast of Nashville \u2014 a southern extension of my native Appalachia. A few decades ago, these trails wouldn\u2019t have seemed welcoming to an Italian performance brand, much less an SUV. But the Stelvio was right at home.<\/p>\n
How times have changed.<\/p>\n
A vintage, orange-and-Confederate-flagged \u201cGeneral Lee\u201d Dodge Challenger sat by the road in rural Leiper\u2019s Fork. It was a relic of a different age. Today, Leiper\u2019s Fork is a hip suburb on the southeast edge of country-music capital Nashville, home to sprawling ranches owned by singer celebrities\u00a0like Justin Timberlake and Chris Stapleton<\/a>.<\/p>\n Manicured horse fences border estates with long, gated driveways leading to imposing mansions with oak front doors answered by beautiful people. As I galloped along in the sexy Stelvio \u2014\u00a0Boy, this filly is fun to ride!<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 it turned a lot of heads. As it will in other multicultural metropolises like Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta and Washington. Their driveways are chock-full of BMW after Audi after Mercedes. All of them silver. All of them familiar. All of them with sterile, alphanumeric badges like X3 and Q5 and GLC. All of them soooo … German.<\/p>\n Detroiters might even feel a pang of kinship since Alfa is Fiat-Chrysler\u2019s luxury brand. Surely, the Italian shares some Yankee ingenuity underneath? Well, no.<\/p>\n \u201cAlfa is separate. Separate engineering group in Modena (Italy). Separate distribution,\u201d says Alfa boss Reid Bigland. \u201cOur belief is if you want credibility, you cannot co-mingle with mass market operations.\u201d<\/p>\n Alfa carries this principle to a fault. It doesn\u2019t even share Chrysler\u2019s acclaimed UConnect infotainment system, which would be an improvement over the Stelvio\u2019s middling, rotary-controlled entry. This signorina oozes the Italian authenticity of a vehicle that was raised along Italy\u2019s formidable Stelvio\u00a0pass. There\u2019s the\u00a0<\/em>Giulia\u2019s signature Alfa snout. And the three-piece Trilobo grille.<\/em><\/p>\n But above all there\u2019s the same Giorgio platform that underlies the Giulia sedan.<\/p>\n The first thing you notice is the sports car-like steering. It\u2019s not hydraulic like the halo 4C sports car, but the point of 4C was to set a tone. Stelvio and Giulia share a crisp, 2.3-turns lock-to-lock steering that required minimal input as I dashed through Tennessee countryside. Paired with the same sophisticated suspension, 280-horsepower (class best), fuel-efficient (24 mpg \u2014 just 2 mpg less than Giulia), turbocharged 2.0-liter engine and eight-speed transmission, Stelvio deserves comparison to its sedan sister \u2014 even though Giulia\u2019s lower roofline (by almost 9 inches) and center of gravity are reminders that SUVs aren\u2019t quite cars.<\/p>\n