The 8C Competizione is a sports coupé with searing performance, sensational styling… and a £100,000 price tag. Originally debuting in concept form at the 2003 Frankfurt Motor Show, the car is ready to order for delivery in a year’s time. And to see what those lucky buyers can expect, Auto Express was first to get behind the wheel.

When Alfa took the wraps off the 8C, few people thought it would make production unchanged. But, as you can see here – and as visitors discovered at last week’s Paris Motor Show – it retains all the concept’s amazing details.

It gets better when you hear the 4.7-litre V8, too. The way it snaps into life with a sharp stab of revs and settles to a bassy, dense idle is reminiscent of a Vanquish. Despite being four cylinders down on the Aston it actually sounds even fiercer – the tight howl a million miles away from the mellow, easy-going note you often associate with V8s. Prod the throttle and the engine snarls as the revs soar, then the exhausts pop and bang as they die away. Maybe that ‘Competizione’ tag isn’t just a sop to the marketing department.

So what is the 8C? Well, in essence it’s a bitza. But it’s a bitza of undeniably noble stock. The engine is similar to that of the Maserati Quattroporte/GranTurismo (meaning it’s built at the Ferrari factory), but it’s been bored and stroked to 4.7 litres and punches out 450bhp at 7000rpm. Expect to see it in future Maseratis, and perhaps the new ‘baby’ front-engined V8 Ferrari. The engine drives through a six-speed paddleshift transaxle ’box (the engine is behind the front axle, the box just ahead of the rear axle, thus concentrating all the masses within the wheelbase). The double-wishbone suspension shares its basic architecture with the Quattroporte (although the 8C is much shorter in wheelbase), but with 8C-specific bushes, geometry and springs and dampers. Interestingly, Alfa chose to ditch the ‘Skyhook’ adaptive dampers to give the 8C a more ‘mechanical’ feel.