Brera Concept

In need of a new concept car to present at the Geneva Salon in 2002, Giorgetto Giugiaro decided to reconsider the prestigious Alfa Romeo compact coupes. Of all the car companies out there, Alfa Romeo was the brand that had featured most prominently in his career. The first standard production car he designed was the Alfa Romeo 2000 Sprint Bertone, and his entrepreneurial adventure was born precisely to bring the Alfasud project to life.

For the Alfa Romeo Brera prototype, Giugiaro set out to look within himself, fine-tuning the concept of a contemporary, elegant, refined, and essential car that could stand as the quintessence of the brand and its history and express technological development, though compressed into an almost intimate and discreet blend: the very requirements of elegance and classicism, of objects that are designed to last over time.

The body was entirely in carbon fiber and driven by a powerful mid-front engine with eight cylinders in a 90 degree V, offering more than 4,000 cc and 400 HP. The only hedonistic touch was a door opening, operated by a patented hinge that projects the door up when turned outward.

The audience's reaction at the Geneva Motor Show was so undeniably positive that the Fiat Group, invited by Alfa's management, decided to put the prototype into production. The entire project development was entrusted to Giugiaro’s company, who took care of the engineering, the computer simulations, the validation tests for the international type approvals, the prototype construction for the bench and road tests, and the pre-production units.

The 2+2, released on to the market in 2005, lost its bottom-hinged doors that could be raised like butterfly wings, and the pretentious single piece components seen on the Motor Show version: a clear debt due to the rough laws of market economy. Anyway the silhouette of the front end was the archetype for the family feeling of Alfa production during the 2000s. Alfa Romeo and Giugiaro won the Compasso d'Oro awarded by the ADI in 2004.