It's the Alfa Romeo hypercar we deserve *and* need right now

Welcome to the Alfa Romeo hypercar you’ll never see. It’s the sketch that took FCA’s top prize in its 2019 ‘Drive for Design’ contest.

You have Maximillian Cooper – of the Design and Architecture Senior High in Miami – to thank for this lump of beautifully designed regret. His task, along with all the others who entered FCA’s contest, was to take any FCA brand – Alfa, Chrysler, Fiat, Jeep, Maserati and so on – and imagine the “ultimate status vehicle”. Job done, we’d proffer.

“We are always impressed by the next generation of talent that competes in the annual Drive for Design contest,” explains FCA’s design boss Mark Trostle, “but this year our expectations were vastly surpassed based on the level of comprehensive art work submitted.

“And, similar to a real-world sketch review, after much debate, the winning designs came down to aesthetic details,” he added. What details, though. That Alfa is bordering on illegal. Something that’d give today’s hypercars nightmares. Oof.

Second place (and second in the image gallery above) went to Mason Ross of the Kennedy Catholic High School in Washington, who also decided to hone in on Alfa because Alfa. You’ll notice both first and second placed sketches have a similar design aesthetic. Both also look superb.

Third place went to Vincent Piaskowski – from Ernest W. Seaholm High School in Michigan – with an idea for a wild Maserati that, according to his sketch, appears to have been modelled after a shark. Yup, works for us.