#gtv

Sports car fans had best brace themselves for a big letdown. Fiat Chrysler, currently pursuing a merger with France’s Groupe PSA, has given investors a peak at future high-end product, and two anticipated models seem to have fallen off the drawing board.

Those products would be the reborn Alfa Romeo GTV and 8C, which are nowhere to be seen in the brand’s near-future product timeline. However, if crossovers are your thing, you’re in luck.

Rare Rides has featured Alfa Romeos from the Seventies (including this car’s sibling) and the Nineties, but never any from that most powdery of decades: the Eighties. That changes today, with an angular and excellently preserved GTV6.

[An expanded and updated version of this CC is here]

We’ve had a lot of utilitarian vehicles last week, and even into this Monday, so with yesterday’s Corolla AE86 leading the charge, we’re going savor some delicious sporty coupes. This Alfetta GT coupe is an interesting follow-up to the AE86, for at least two reasons. Designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro, this lovely Alfa was not only a feast for the eyes in that largely vulgar mid-seventies period, but was also an influential one. The Alfetta GT was one of a few key designs of the period that had a profound and lasting effect on styling trends, including the Corolla itself. The other reason: cars like the fast, cheap but ultra-reliable Corolla GT-S helped put Alfa out of business in the US.