► It’s a rebodied Alfa Romeo Giulia…
► … designed to look like a 1962 Giulia
► And it certainly doesn’t come cheap
Italy has a rich coachbuilding history. There’s Zagato, Touring, Bertone and Carrozzeria to name but a few – and they’ve all produced some truly wonderful works of automotive art, each with their own unique personality.
But every Italian coachbuilder has one thing in common. They all do their best work when their starting point for a project is an Alfa Romeo. Now, there’s another Italian design studio treading those same boards in the hope it can add its name to the greatest hits album.
It’s called ErreErre Fuoriserie, which is a far more difficult name for me to wrap my mangled regional English around than Bertone. This is its first project – a modified version of the Giulia Quadrifoglio that’s been restyled to look like the 1962 Giulias the Italian police drove (badly) in The Italian Job.
I reckon it looks both gorgeous and gawky, depending on what angle you view it from. The front end is nothing short of perfection (especially when viewed from the three-quarter angle in the header image), but the proportions at the rear look a little clumsy to my eye.
That’s probably because ErreErre Fuoriserie couldn’t modify the Giulia’s safety cell, as that would compromise its crash performance. As a result, those boxy retro body panels have been spaced off the Giulia’s curvy under structure, making the rear look a little wider than it should.
But I digress, because my personal tastes pale into insignificance once you learn how much work goes into each car. It takes a total of 5,000 hours to design and manufacturer each car (or, to put that another way, 208 consecutive 24-hour days) – and it’s positively groaning under the weight of its craftsmanship.
The bodywork, for example, is made entirely from hand finished carbon fibre, while the wheels are a recreation of the pepper-pot wheels fitted to the 1962 Giulia Tipo 105, sized up to 19 inches to help fill the car’s massive arches.
Exhaust? It’s a custom-made centre-exit unit from Capristo Automotive. Suspension? That’s unique to the car as well, thanks to Bilstein. The brakes have also been uprated to Brembo Carbon Ceramic units – important because ErreErre Fuoriserie has extracted a bit more power from the Giulia’s engine.
It produces 554hp and 502lb ft of torque, up from the 514bhp and 443lb ft of torque you get in the standard car. ErreErre Fuoriserie hasn’t supplied any performance specs (probably because the cars are far too expensive to risk crashing). But I reckon it’ll get from 0–62mph faster than an Italian barista can pour you an espresso.
All this craftsmanship doesn’t come cheap, though. ErreErre Fuoriserie charges a staggering €310,000 (around £260,000) for each car – and that doesn’t include the cost of the donor car. If you want one, you need to supply your own.
But if you’ve got that sort of cash rattling around in your bank account, you would. Wouldn’t you? I certainly would. I’ll have mine in red, please.