D14| Saturday/Sunday, February 22 - 23, 2020 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
RUMBLE SEAT/ DAN NEIL
Can Sporty Sedans Still
Thrive in an SUVs’ World?
OF THE SEVERALthousand lines in
John Milton’s poem “Paradise Lost,”
I’ve only ever remembered the sexy
bits. “Now let us play,” says Adam
to Eve in Book 9. “For never did thy
beauty since the day/I saw thee
first and wedded thee, adorned/
with all perfections, so inflame my
sense/With ardor to enjoy thee,
fairer now/Than ever...”
The verse was fresh in my head,
having recited it to my wife on Val-
entine’s Day (a pro tip, gentlemen). I
heard it tolling again last week when
the delivery people pulled up in a
2020 Alfa Romeo Giulia Ti Q4 sedan,
painted a glowing, Milk-of-Magnesia
blue. Fairer now than ever.
Comparatively speaking. In a ve-
hicle market increasingly dominated
by dorky SUVs, machines like the
Giulia are looking better and better.
What we have here is a properly
fun-to-drive, human-scale sport se-
dan, with 50/50 weight distribution;
rear- or all-wheel drive; an eight-
speed automatic with paddle shift-
ers that can do the deed in less than
100 milliseconds; a carbon-fiber
drive shaft and limited-slip differen-
tial.Questa è tanta macchina.
The Giulia Quadrifoglio version
(referring to the performance
line’s four-leaf clover emblem) is
even more magically delicious. The
Q-ship is powered by what is ef-
fectively half a Ferrari V12: a 2.9-Those are baby-making hips.
No question, the Giulia has a body
for sin. But car ownership isn’t al-
ways a bower of bliss, especially
owning Italian cars. It doesn’t mat-
ter how lovely the Alfa is if the only
people who get to admire it are the
techs down at the dealership. Like
Adam, those considering the Giulia
must weigh their lust against their
fears of hell’s fiery furnace, stoked
with repair bills. It’s a close call.
Here’s what the smitten need to
know: Alfa Romeo, a wholly owned
property of Fiat Chrysler Automo-
biles (FCA), is in a world of finan-
cial hurt. U.S. sales were down
20.5% in 2019 from the year before.
Sales of the Giulia sedan fell 24.4%.
That doesn’t mean they are bad
cars. it means that people stopped
buying them, along with a lot of
other midsize carlike products.
Alfa’s situation in the U.S. is, how-
ever, worrisome for the three Rs:
retail, repair and residual value.
FCA management has had to
drastically scale back and slow walk
Alfa’s product development while it
improves its balance sheets and pre-
pares for electrification. As a result,
the Giulia remains virtually un-
changed from its debut four years
ago and won’t see what’s known as a
mid-model refresh until 2021. FCA
needs this immortal beauty to be
immortal a while longer.The biggest year-over changes
for 2020 have to do with the UX: a
standard 8.8-inch display screen
with improved graphics; and a
more robust set of driver-assis-
tance systems, including the dire-
sounding “Full-speed Forward Col-
lision Warning Plus”—the plus
being active emergency braking.
Wouldn’t want anything to happen
to that falcon-like beak.
I’ve spent some time with its newinfotainment system and declare it
marginally adequate. You don’t buy
these things for the jukebox.
If you’re among the few thousand
North Americans who might yet be
horned-up enough to buy the Giulia
despite the warning signs, let me of-
fer some reassurance. First, FCA in-
vested a now almost-unthinkable 5
billion Euros into the reboot of Alfa
Romeo in the early part of last de-
cade. The company created its own
flexible product architecture, called
the Giorgio platform, and created a
new home base for manufacturing,
in the city of Cassino. The Giulia
represents an Alfa Romeo fully
funded, at the peak of its stature in
FCA’s reorganization.
The car was actually over-engi-
neered and over-contented for the
competitive set. Under the all-steel
monocoque are elaborate alumi-
num front and rear subframes, as
well as aluminum suspension,
bracing, and high-spec brake com-
ponents. Hood and doors are ei-
ther aluminum or carbon fiber, in
the case of the Quadrifoglio.
Our tester’s 2.0-liter turbo four is
also fairly exotic, with direct injec-
tion; a twin-scroll turbo with elec-
tronically actuated wastegate; liq-
uid-cooled charge air cooler; and
forged aluminum pistons. In a con-
spicuous effort to reduce valve train
losses, the engine-builders specified
a hollow exhaust camshaft, with
end-pivot roller-finger followers and
hydraulic lash adjusters. Because
nothing ever goes wrong with that.
The result is a silky-smooth little
tourbillion making a righteous
amount of torque: 306 lb-ft, be-
tween 2,000 and 4,800 rpm, with
peak horsepower (280) at 5,200
rpm. The Ti Q4 (with optional all-
wheel drive) weighs a fit-and-ready
3,622 pounds. Alfa cites a 0-60 mph
time of 5.1 seconds. However, to do
that, one must first arouse the Giulia
by turning the drive mode out of
one of its fuel-saving modes into Dy-
namic. God sees you.
Spellbound by the Giulia’s beauty,
buyers may not notice damnation
yawning before them. At Alfa Romeo
of Akron, Ohio, as a random for-in-
stance, the every-10,000-mile ser-
vice on the four-cylinder costs $249
(the first one’s free). The 20,000-
mile service runs $499.95. At 30K,
it’s $429. At 40K, $499.95...
That seems fair.FCA US LLC
CLOUDY FORECAST
Despite killer looks and
a 0-60 mph time of 5.1
seconds Giulia’s sales
plunged 24.4% in 2019.2020 Alfa Romeo
Giulia Ti Sport
Carbon AWDBase Price$50,345
Price, as Tested
$59,640 (including
destination)
Engine and Drivetrain
Longitudinallymounted, turbo-
charged and inter-
cooled direct-injection
SOHC 2.0-liter four
cylinder; eight-speed
automatic with man-
ual-shift mode; rear-bi-
ased all-wheel drive
Power/Torque280 hp
at 5,200 rpm/306 lb-ftat 2,000-4,800 rpm
Length/Width/
Height/Wheelbase
182.8/73.2/56.5/111.0
inches
Curb Weight3,622
pounds
EPAFuelEconomy
23/31/26 mpg, city/
highway/combinedGEAR & GADGETS
You Look Like a Thing
andILoveYou
By Janelle ShaneElevator PitchIdeal for those
intrigued and/or mildly un-
nerved by the increasing role
A.I. plays in modern life (and
our future), this book is acces-
sible enough to educate you
while easing anxieties about
the coming robot apocalypse.
A surprisingly hilarious read, it
presents a view of A.I. that is
more “Office Space” than “The
Terminator.” Typical insight: A.I.
that can’t write a coherent cake
recipe is probably not going to
take over the world.
Very Brief Excerpt“For the
foreseeable future, the danger
will not be that A.I. is too smart
but that it’s not smart enough.”
Surprising FactoidA lot of
what we think are social-media
bots are almost definitely hu-
mans being (poorly) paid to act
as a bot. People stealing the
jobs of robots: How meta.Machines Like Me
By Ian McEwanElevator PitchAdam, the star-
tlingly real-looking artificial
human at the center of this
novel, has little in common
with our current scientific re-
ality, much less that of 1982,
when it’s set. So “Machines
Like Me” excels less as a
faithful representation of A.I.
and more as a representation
of the moral failings and sex-
ual hang-ups that humans
project onto it. Luckily, it’s
also quite a page-turner.
Very Brief Excerpt“His eyes
were open but he failed to
blink...I had brought him out
into the world too soon.”
Surprising FactoidA.I. scientist
Demis Hassabis makes a
cameo in the novel as the real-
life figure who invented an al-
gorithm that mastered the an-
cient Chinese game Go—even
though Mr. Hassabis was actu-
ally just 6 years old in 1982.The Creativity Code
By Marcus du SautoyElevator PitchWhat starts as
an exploration of the many
strides—and failures—A.I. has
made in the realm of artistic
expression turns out to be an
ambitious meditation on the
meaning of creativity and con-
sciousness. It shines in finding
humanlike traits in algorithms;
one chapter breathlessly docu-
ments the matches between
Mr. Hassabis’s algorithm and a
world champion of Go, a game
many scientists said a com-
puter could never win.
Very Brief Excerpt“Machines
might ultimately help us...be-
come less like machines.”
Surprising FactoidAs an ex-
ample of “overfitting,” the book
includes a mathematical model
that accidentally predicts the
human population will drop to
zero by 2028. Probably an error,
but better live it up now—just
FCA US LLC; ILLUSTRATION BY MIKEY BURTON in case.—Alison Murphy
BOOKSHELF
The Wall Street Journal is not compensated by retailers listed in itsarticles as outlets for products. Listed retailers frequently are not the sole retail outlets.Three books that explore the ways robots and A.I. are making the world
a weirder, more creative—and maybe even more human—placeI Like Big Bots
‘The robot takeover isn’t quite going as planned.’
liter bi-turbo V6 producing a mol-
ten 505 hp and 443 lb-ft of torque.
In the rear is a fully articulating
torque-vectoring differential. I
hustled one around Sonoma Race-
way and thought I was gonna cry.
The Giuliaissss so sexy, says the
snake. While this spacious four-door
can’t be compared with the svelte
coupes of Postwar Alfa—33 Stradale,
Giulietta SS, GTV6, 8C Competiz-
ione—it does stack up well againstthe marque’s historic roster of se-
dans, including the now-collectible
75 (called Milano in the U.S.) in the
‘80s; and Walter de Silva’s penning
of the 156 (1997). ProtestingAlfisti
canscrawlanangrynoteonabis-
cottoand dunk it in theirristretto.
The Giulia’s emphatic rear-drive
layout expresses itself in the long,
diving hoodline; in the minimal
front overhang; and the volume
massed at the rear quarter, the tu-
mescence around the wheel wells.It doesn’t matter how
lovely the Giulia is if the
only people who get to
admire it are the techs
down at the dealership.