Everyone at some stage in their motoring life has an Italian moment. Mine occurred about 20 years ago when I fell in love with a red (of course!) Alfa Romeo 33 GTI, which at the time superseded the highly successful Alfasud. I really enjoyed it for the first couple of months…the rasping exhaust note, retro-styled wooden steering wheel and the handling – especially on tight corners was awesome.

Then it became a real pain in the butt. The lack of space between the clutch and the brake pedal drove me crazy, but my biggest gripe about this car was that on days when the temperature hit the 90’s, the engine would die - for absolutely no reason at all. All you could do was pullover and let it cool down. And the techos at the Alfa dealership would just shrug and hand me a bill for a couple of hundred bucks.

That’s when I swore off Alfas, and Italian cars, for life. Until now. Because, I’ve just seen the Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione – a tribute to the legendary 1948 6C 2500 Competizione driven by Fangio. And it’s stunning! The body – which is sexier than Megan Fox’s, sits on a Maserati Gran Turismo chassis and the engineers have dropped a Ferrari V8 into the engine bay.

It’s no prima donna either: 0 – 100km/h in 4.2 seconds and a top speed of up to 306km/h. The only downside that I can see is that the production run is limited to 500. Questa e la vita. More at: www.bayer12.blogspot.com