Sex-o-Cars

Style over substance. Let’s get one thing out of the way here: the Alfa Romeo Brera isn’t as good as it looks. How could it be? In a world awash with androgynous sporting coupes, it stands out as a beacon of taste and flair – it’s an example of Giugiaro working at the height of his powers and, wherever you go in one, heads are turned. When was the last time you strained your neck to check out the Audi TT driving past you in town?

Launched some five years ago to replace the rakish GTV, to be fair, it moved the game on significantly for Alfa. My cousin once visited me in a GTV Spider that was all of six months old. Painted black and trimmed in gorgeous tan leather upholstery, I fell immediately in lust with it but after ten minutes behind its wheel I’d had enough. Because it started to rain. It wasn’t the operation of its roof that was the problem or the cabin noise that angered me. It was the fact that rainwater was entering the driver’s footwell in alarming quantities. On a six month old car? Come on! Absolutely disgraceful.

Alfa Romeo knew damn well that it had to sharpen up its act with the Brera. Having wowed potential customers with the ItalDesign show car in 2003, the company bowed to public pressure and put it into production. The show car had been based on a Maserati but the production model ended up being built around the architecture of the less exotic Alfa 159, with which it shares some obvious design cues inside and out, as well as engines and transmissions.