Alfa Romeo has been considering an SUV for well over a decade, but it wasn't until Marchionne's plan to revive the Alfa Romeo brand with a 5 billion euro investment that the company started to work on an all-new vehicle lineup. Two billion of that has been spent on the Giulia sedan -- which will go into production first, at the end of 2015 -- with a spider and a coupe variant to follow in 2017 and 2018.
It is called Kamal, and it marks an authentic conceptual and stylistic leap forward in the international car scene. New horizons and brand new segments are opening up, and Alfa wants to play an important part. At this point it is easy to imagine the enormous effort that the Alfa Romeo Business Unit has poured into one ambitious goal it set itself: to present the concept of 'elegant sportiness', which has always been a distinctive feature of the Brand, in a completely new form, that is unique in its way.
Through a complex, refined interplay of allusions, Kamal reminds us of Alfa Romeo's glorious traditions in the sports car sector, while at the same time it also includes attractive ideas that look to the future and new developments in the SUV - MPV segments in particular.
A mix of style and design that represents a distinctive crossover of cultures. The model is a fusion of different vehicle types. It combines the off-road performance of an SUV (Sport Utility Vehicle) with the driving satisfaction and handling characteristics of a compact Alfa Romeo. At the same time, it offers a versatile, functional passenger compartment typical of a Multi Purpose Vehicle due above all to clever use of space and a wide range of seat configurations. Everything comes packed into an unmistakable Alfa shape designed by the Arese Style Centre. The car would be just as at home on the intricate streets of a European city as it would on a desert track of frontier landscape.
The power output is 250 bhp at 6200 rpm, with peak torque of 300 Nm (30.6 kgm) at 4800 rpm. Which is sufficient to guarantee exciting performance, and a torque curve that reaches very high values even at low speeds, allowing you to travel in 6th at less than 2000 rpm and to slip rapidly away without needing to change gear.
The gearbox is the famous Selespeed unit with an operating logic derived from Formula 1, which makes for faster gear changes at low and high speeds.
Sophisticated suspension, a brilliant engine, the latest generation gearbox and direct steering, that responds precisely and rapidly. This winning combination produces the incredibly enjoyable drive of Kamal, which is pure Alfa Romeo. With an extra something. The prototype has a lower centre of gravity than a conventional SUV, increasing the car's stability, and it is also lower; this improves the Cd and thus performance (the estimate top speed exceeds 200 km/h).