The new 8C Spider is based on the 8C Competizione, sharing the coupe's Maserati-sourced 450 HP 4.7-liter V8 as well as its sexy good looks. Along with the first production 8C Spider, Alfa Romeo will roll out a couple of their classics including the 1924 P2 Gran Premio, 1931 8C 2300 Tipo Le Mans, 1975 33 TT 12, 1968 Carabo Concept and the 1978 Navajo Concept. With this gorgeous grouping of cars in attendance, Goodwood promises to be quite the place to be this weekend. [WCF]

2009 Alfa Romeo 8C Spider
1924 Alfa Romeo P2 Gran Premio
1931 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Tipo Le Mans
1975 Alfa Romeo 33 TT 12
1968 Alfa Romeo Carabo Concept
1976 Alfa Romeo Navajo Concept

As far as random street sightings to, the odds of an Alfa Romeo Roadster Zagato—the open top version of the ES-30—are stacked against you. Certainly it’s not something you expect to bump into as you’re ambling down the old streets of Sofia on a hot summer day. The Bulgarian capital has its share of interesting cars on display amidst the sea of Eastern European muck, but the nouveau riche of this corner of the world were yet to become riche when Alfa’s weird study in angular plastic panels was first shown at the 1989 Geneva Motor Show.

Yet there it stands, parked by a trash can on Shishman Street, the V6 ticking in the heat under a psychedelic mural of a poem by the Hungarian revolutionary Sándor Petőfi. It is one of only 284 ever manufactured, which makes it three times as rare as a Lamborghini Miura. And when was the last time you bumped into one of those while nibbling on a piece of banitsa?

The ES-30 was Alfa Romeo’s swan song to rear-wheel drive and independence. It was based on the 75 sedan, the last Alfa conceived before Fiat ownership. As deliciously classic a layout as sports sedans come: Giuseppe Busso’s wonderful 3-liter V6 up front with the transmission in the back in a transaxle layout. Power is sent via a limited-slip differential to rear wheels suspended by a de Dion tube. It was balanced, simple and lithe, with a body mass very much on the near side of 3,000 pounds.

The 75 was weird enough with its angles that defy all logic and an interior more in common with Epcot than with the automobile, but the ES-30 is a whole other ballpark. Perhaps it is the inevitable eccentricity of its French-Italian shared parentage. Robert Opron designed the car, the same man who created the Citroën SM, that gorgeous hybrid of Citroën style and Maserati power. Or was it Citroën unreliability and Maserati…unreliability? In any case, Opron penned the 75’s goodbye and Antonio Castellana finished up his sketches—to be skinned in thermoplastic injection moulded composite body panels. A strange choice for a car, but then plastics and Alfa Romeos have a way of meeting up every once in a while.

You can never quite shake the feeling that the ES-30 is a kit car. It is too angular, too plastic, too downright quirky to be an official product, yet that’s exactly what it it. Alfa Romeo produced 1036 coupés—called SZ for Sprint Zagato—and 284 Roadster Zagatos. You could have any engine you desired, as long as it was Alfa’s mellifluent screaming and bellowing 3-liter V6, the one with all six intake manifold pipes lined up in a regiment of chrome almost too pretty to look at.

Alfa Romeo never made another car quite like it. After production of the ES-30 wrapped up in 1993, there wasn’t a rear-wheel drive Alfa until the 8C Competizione. And that V6 engine is also gone now, replaced with a GM unit using Alfa cylinder heads.

So snag one while you can. It won’t be easy and it won’t be cheap—but at least it won’t rust on you like other Alfas.

Why? Just one word: plastics.

Photo Credit: Zsolt Csikós (Alfa Romeo 75), ChristopherJamesGreen/Flickr (Alfa Romeo V6 engine) and the author (Alfa Romeo RZ)

We are tiptoeing down a canyon road on spent winter tires in the wake of a bus kicking up gray sludge at every turn, a road put on this green Earth for Tsuiso drifts and gravity runs on April nights with the transmission in neutral and no sound but crickets and the wind. An Alfa MiTo powers its way uphill and flashes by us in a quick ball of pearlescent black. This is one of the perks of living in Europe. The other: tomatoes come in red, as opposed to sickly ethylene orange.

All Alfas should be driven in anger. This one? No different. The range on the tach beginning at 5,000 rpm? Every time you drop below that, God kills a bunny. Magic akin to Honda’s VTEC happens from then on and students of mechanics should be able to explain to you the tiny machined parts involved. Unfortunately, I’m a student of that peculiar strand of piano wire that goes straight from you eardrums into your heart and which shares the eigenfrequency of high RPM engine noises. So I can’t tell you anything about the mechanics. Let it suffice for me to say hearing it will make you happy.

Mimette is guiding us down the canyon road with a sure hand and since she is well-versed in Alfas, twenty-four valve V6’s in particular, with the inlet pipes lined up in one neat chromed row, I say: “So hey, did you see the MiTo GTA?”

The MiTo tortures her. If you’ve owned Alfas, you don’t buy teeny-tiny Alfas, you buy big Alfa sedans with twin exhausts to carry the gospel of the V6. But try living with a 16-foot sedan in a cramped unplanned European city. You’ll go mad trying to park it. So she sold her big Alfa for a tiny, zingy Fiat, a Punto, which will be replaced by the Grande Punto upon which the Alfa MiTo will be built. Big names, yes, but we’re talking about cars concealable in an average American bacon cheeseburger. And the MiTo would be her logical choice: skip the Grande Punto, it’s all supermini and all Alfa.

But what if it’s retrograde like the Fiat 500 and the Mini Cooper? I’m afraid that would be the end of it as a reasonable pick. Retrograde is what is killing the age of the automobile. You can sex it up all you want by calling it retrofuturism and applying Ford GR–1 concept levels of chrome. Whatever. You're still saying: I have given up and the Sixties are good enough for me. Obviously, they are not. The 500 and the Mini fail this test. Growth hormone and twelve airbags do not Vorsprung make.

Trouble is brewing for our MiTo, even though the GTA spec conjures up a ludicrous 240 HP from five Coke cans of engine (turbocharged, yes, but this is still on the outer reaches of Hondas and Ferraris and whatnot). The MiTo is essentially the 8C Competizione if the bigger Alfa was transmogrified into a European supermini. Also, if the 8C wasn’t a horrible retro sports coupé for rich buyers who happened to come into wealth forty years too late to enjoy it.

Oh yes, grown men will grow knee joints of Jell-O in its presence and its flat-crank V8 is a marching band but—aside from an impressive array of technological underpinnings—it is a forty year old car. It is actually called the Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale and it was built in 1967.

Let’s go back now to 2007. My friend Larry and I are 120 MPH-ing our way through the foothills of the Italian Alps when he takes an exit to pull into the town of Rovereto and says: “Peter, you have got to see this.” And by this he means an exhibit on Italian car design where you float past a Miura and a Ferrari F40 to come face to face with the 33 Stradale. Here you go, and that’s Larry on the phone:

After an absolute massacre in the early years of Formula 1, Alfa Romeo retired from racing only to return in the middle of the 60s with the moderately successful Tipo 33 that most importantly spawned the 33 Stradale. If you’ve never seen one in person, the best way to describe the feeling is to have all the blood flush out of your head all at once and proceed fortwith to your nether regions. Only eighteen were made.

Each has 230 HP—less than the MiTo GTA!—, but they come from a 2-liter racing V8 that redlines at 10K with no more than 1,500 pounds of car to propel all the way to 160 MPH. And then you peek through the transparent engine cover to see eight velocity trumpets stacked behind your head. If your significant other has long hair, those eight velocity trumpets will suck up the strands and proceed to light them on fire.

That’s the 33 Stradale and, in a twist of design, this is where the MiTo GTA transcends the 500, the Mini and all the other old cars masquerading as new cars automakers make these days. It’s a boy racer supermini modeled on a shamelessly unoriginal supercar, itself modeled on perhaps the most awesome street special, with race cred in spades. But as I said earlier, forget the 8C Competizione: Frank Stephenson, designer of the MiTo, has morphed an elusive supercar into a boy racer you will actually be able to buy. That’s not retrograde, that’s pure irreverence.

And what a gorgeous design. Yes, diffusers are the new rear wings on hot hatches, but since when do city cars have field mortars for exhausts? Or masses of spider legs for rims? Or better yet, inverted Hofmeister kinks for rear windows? I dare you to drive one and not feel as if there's superglue sneakily squirted between the go pedal and the floor.

Let’s just hope the engine won’t fall to bits producing those 141 HP per liter. Or that they’ll dial out the turbo lag. Let’s just hope that Alfa Romeo will actually make it because the MiTo GTA is a brilliant, hopeful hot hatch. It’s got heritage, it’s got futurism, and it’s what Alfa Romeo should return to the United States with, not a retro sports coupé for your local James Glickenhaus-type. Give us the future any day, not the past.

Peter Orosz, the editor of Hyperleggera, a website he fervently claims is not a car blog (although it really is, we don't care what he says — Ed.), pens Jalopnik’s newest feature dubbed "Crazy Euro Car Boy." It's a series all about one Hungarian sometimes-motoring journalist’s obsession with the cult of cars.

Photo Credit: ijzerman, SOCIALisBETTER, Arild Andersen, pixelthing.com

Because we've shown you what types of women certain cars attract, we thought we'd spice this list up a bit with the type of women you'll most likely pick up with these 11 cars you'll most likely get laid in. Of course, keep in mind we didn't say these cars will get you exactly who'll you'll want to copulate with. But we digress.

Anyway, you'll also want to click on each vehicle's image to see how the car will seal the deal for you.

11.) 2009 Ford F-150 Platinum Edition

Costs: $40,910 MSRP
Attracts: High-Class Redneck Ladies
Click on the image above for how this car will seal the deal!

10.) 2009 Lexus IS 250

Costs: $32,325 MSRP
Attracts: Upwardly Mobile Executive Assistants
Click on the image above for how this car will seal the deal!

9.) 2009 Audi S5

Costs: $51,875
Attracts: MILFs
Click on the image above for how this car will seal the deal!

8.) 2009 Cadillac Escalade

Costs: $62,545
Attracts: Girls Sippin' That Crissy
Click on the image above for how this car will seal the deal!

7.) 2009 Toyota Prius

Costs: $22,000
Attracts: Eco-Minded Yuppies
Click on the image above for how this car will seal the deal!

6.) 2009 Bentley Continental GTC

Costs: $193,300
Attracts: Golf Course Preppy Chicks
Click on the image above for how this car will seal the deal!

5.) 2009 Jeep Wrangler

Costs: $20,205
Attracts: University of Tennessee Sorority Girls
Click on the image above for how this car will seal the deal!

4.) 2009 Subaru Forester

Costs: $19,995
Attracts: Ani DiFranco Fans
Click on the image above for hints on how to seal the deal

3.) 2009 Ferrari California

Costs: $200,000 MSRP (est)
Attracts: Lamborghini Booth Professionals
Click on the image above for how this car will seal the deal!

2. ) 2009 VW Eos

Costs: $31,615
Attracts: Flamboyant Gay Males
Click on the image above for how this car will seal the deal!

1.) Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione

Costs: $210,000 (limited U.S. sales)
Attracts: Anyone with a pulse
Click on the image above for how this car will seal the deal!

Photo Credit: Hot Rodder Magazine

If you think about it, such a deal would be a marriage made in convenience heaven, especially given the current value of the US Dollar against the Euro. We're also fairly certain the US automakers would be eager to part ways with the cash black hole of unused auto plants. So putting the two together would be a profit-making proposal we could easily see happening. We're only hoping the UAW labor won't balk at the idea of having to meet those legendary high Italian quality levels. [FT.com]