Alfa Romeo may be planning to reveal a new variant to their Giulia sedan, supposedly to fill a gap between their performance flagship Quadrifoglio Verde and midrange-but-still-quick Giulia Veloce. To be clear, there’s a 169kW power gulf between them, certainly enough to warrant an in-betweener.
On the FCA-operated Mopar Technical Authority web portal, freelance journalist Bozi Tatarevic discovered a new and unfamiliar addition to the engine selection drop down where it detailed a 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo-petrol with ‘350HP’ (260kW), something he promptly took a screen grab of an posted on social media.
The Italian automaker, it appears, could be the next to offer a very high output from a pedestrian engine capacity and so few cylinders. On the top of our heads, the ones that have popularised this method of big-power generation have been Mercedes-AMG with their A45, Ford with the 2.3-litre EcoBoost in the Focus RS, Honda in the newest Civic Type R, and Volvo in their twin-charged T6 motor.
Indeed, the only other option for Alfa Romeo to achieve that kind of output would be to insert a detuned version of their bi-turbo V6. Though, seeing as how that engine is one of the QV’s most prestigious selling points, it would be a waste to see it commoditised.
There have been some talk of a Giulia with roughly 260kW before this latest development, but Alfa Romeo have denied any other engine variants/tunes for the 2018 model year. Having said that, perhaps these are the early unofficial confirmations of that such a configuration could appear in the 2019 Alfa Romeo Giulia.
Supposedly, the extra fast 2.0-litre Giulia’s increased performance will come courtesy of a new 48-volt electrical architecture, supplying enough energy to run an electric compressor. Given the on-demand nature of this forced induction system, it’s possible that the power figure is only possible during a brief overboost window, leading to the possibility that this new model isn’t a new model at all but rather the 2019 update to the Giulia Veloce.
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