The 2017 Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio carries two names of renown. The Giulia was the name given to the now-iconic 1960s sedan. The Quadrifoglio is another piece of Alfa history, coming from the 1923 Targa Florio in Sicily. Alfa Romeo race driver Ugo Sivocci, a superstitious man, painted a four-leaf clover (quadrifoglio) on his car for luck. For the first time in his career, Sivocci won the Florio. Not long afterwards, the race driver was testing a new Alfa Romeo car and had not painted the clover on it. He died in a wreck and his teammates took up the Quadrifoglio legend, painting it on their cars encased in a triangle to symbolize the loss of their fourth man.

The new 2017 Giulia Quadrifoglio has the same design creed as its predecessor from half a century ago. It's a relatively simple, contemporary sedan in look but the details bring out a lot of style. The carefully shaped saloon hood bears unassuming lines of adornment which further the wineglass V of the grille back to the hood. Slitted headlights look out from the corners over air scoops that forego bezels in favor of body shaping edgework.

Simple vents behind the front wheel wells offer a hint at the performance under the hood, belying the simplistic sport coupe sedan styling. The rear wells flare out slightly to give notice of the rear-driven powertrain and wide exhaust openings on either corner finish the muscular touches.

Underneath the hood of the 2017 Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio is a powerful 505-horsepower bi-turbo, 90-degree angled V6 derived from a Ferrari design. This will be the most powerful Alfa production car to date. The 2.9-liter V6 offers those 377 kilowatts of output with 443 pound-feet of torque (601 Nm) to match. That's all thanks to the bi-turbo kicking out a peak 35 psi at peak. A short-shifting six-speed manual transmission is available, giving the car a 0-60 mph (0-96.5 km/h) time of just 3.8 seconds and a top speed of 191 mph (307 km/h). This car did the Nurburgring in a record-setting 7:39 lap.