Limited edition cars have a vague definition of what makes them limited. Some are produced in just-enough numbers to homologate cars for motorsport, others can be as mundane as a different finish for the interior trim. As you may know, Alfa Romeo is its own F1 team this year (well, in name alone, seeing as they’re still using Ferrari’s V6s and the same management outside of the Alfa is running the show like last year), and they’ve also added a former champion to their two-car team in the icy form of Kimi Räikkönen, who joins Antonio Giovinazzi for the upcoming season in the pair of Alfa Romeo Racing C38s that wear “Stelvio” and “Giulia” insignias on their dorsal fins.
Last year the Milanese marque got their range-topping Stelvio Quadrifoglio to lap the Nordschleife faster than any other SUV (after they’d already achieved the same feat earlier in the four-leaf version of their Giulia sedan), and to celebrate they released some very Russian-mob-spec special editions, by which we mean flat black paint. Before we get to see the big news from Alfa at Geneva early next month, they’ve just shown off these new F1-inspired special editions of their fastest road going SUV and four-door, and these are quite the lookers. They wear a very similar livery to the C38 F1 cars, and the combination of Trofeo White and Compeitizione Red is an arresting but not overly busy look that we can certainly get behind—remember the John Player Special BMWs and Lotuses you could buy way back when?
Beyond the clean paint scheme, the two models are treated to a laundry list of other special bits to separate these from the standard cars. Inside are Sparco seats with exposed carbon shells, a bunch of Alcantara (natch), and of course some badges that let you know your car isn’t like the rest—in this case these badges read: “Alfa Romeo Racing,” so while it’s trite, we’re suckers for OEM offerings that include the word “Racing,” can’t help it. There are also carbon fiber accents on the exterior, and those yellow accents on the tires are a small but impactful bit of styling that harkens to the race cars these draw their aesthetic inspiration from. In mechanical terms, these are more or less the same Quadrifoglio versions of the Stelvio and Giulia that you can buy right now, but they are given Akropovic exhaust systems to make sure your neighbors know you’ve got the F1-edition when you leave for work in the morning. The powertrain in both is the 2.9L twin-turbo V6 that makes a few horsepower over 500.
Limited edition cars that are more or less visual rearrangements of existing ones can be cool or contrived, but I’m leaning toward the former on these. What do you think?
