Ready to buy an Italian car? Prepare for the most passionate heart-wrenching relationship of your life. There’s a market near Brunelleschi’s famous cathedral in Florence, Italy that sells just about any leather good one can imagine. Like the cathedral, the leather goods are distinctly Italian in the sense that the craftsmen use the given medium, hide in this case, as a canvas on which to produce beautiful trinkets. Quality, however, is not a top priority for these artisans, who don’t have to deal with complaints once tourists disperse and fly back to their homes and find that their new wallets, purses, and belts disintegrate with alarming ease.

The experience of losing €15 on a butter soft leather wallet that didn’t survive a trip back to America was at the forefront of our minds when we picked up a Vulcano Black Metallic Alfa Romeo Giulia Ti from airport parking on a rainy San Francisco night. This wasn’t our first rodeo with Alfa Romeo’s Giorgio platform in Giulia manifestation, but the last time we drove this athletic and compliant beast, it was powered by a feisty 2.9-liter twin-turbo Ferrari-derived V6 that spit out 505 horsepower with all the drama you’d expect from a red Italian car festooned with carbon fiber and a set of paddle shifters.