Alfa's New Roadster Will Make It The Most Exciting Brand Of The Next 5 Years

Hold on to your slacks - something amazing has happened. Everyone’s dream combination of Italian passion and Japanese reliability is on the way, and it’ll be affordable too. Ish.

Mazda and Alfa Romeo have signed on the dotted line to build a new compact Alfa roadster on the next – and no doubt epic – Mazda MX-5 chassis, marking a potentially massive return to form for the ever-underachieving Italians. The pic above is of an early concept and it’s as hot as Elisha Cuthbert in pigtails.

But the good news doesn't stop there. Alfa is going to use its own engine and with any luck it’ll bang, scream and wail like a One Direction groupie. Those in the know are looking at the 1750 TBi turbo engine as a likely lad to get dropped into the Alfa MX-5, and with a fizzy 200bhp or so up its sleeves, it’ll be a thorn the size of a baby’s arm in the side of the 'Toyobaru BR86'.

You can still get the Mazda for well under £20k, so a tarted-up Italian version shouldn’t cost any more than the £25k starting whack for the Japanese coupe.

Arguably it should never have come to this. Alfa is a brand you’ll find in the dictionary if you look up ‘mismanagement.’ With such a monumental heritage to look after, the directors seemed to have forgotten about actually building new cars. It wasn’t all that long ago that if you went into an Alfa dealer you’d have seen nothing but an empty floor space and a dusty, cobwebbed sign that reads ‘back in five minutes.’

With barely anything to sell that was worth waking up for, the company took a real kicking in the recession and lost even more ground to the big Germans. But while Hans and Fritz carry on making cars as dull as a game of charades with the presenters of Countdown, in Alfa Romeo there’s a major glimmer of hope for those of us who actually like cars.

Take the Giulietta compact hatch. Arguably no boggo C-segment car is going to melt your trousers but it’s a great piece of design with a characterful interior that you can really get involved with. Even a basic Giulietta is more lovable than a top-spec Golf, and we should applaud that.

Then there’s the crazy little MiTo TwinAir, a car that’s half metal box and half Jack Russell terrier, ready to bite the ankles of anything and anyone who goes anywhere near it. Hooning around in it is top fun, even if it does mean you’ll be on first name terms with your friendly local filling station n00b.

The point is that Alfa is making exciting cars again, with better and better yet to come. I’m so excited about it that my inner 10-year-old might pop out. And nobody wants that.