I am an alfista. The word is Italian for someone devoted to the cars produced by Alfa Romeo. Together with the thousands of others who share that devotion, I am one of the alfisti. Nobody chooses to join the ranks of the alfisti on the numbers alone. We love the brand for reasons that have little to do with logic, and we choose these beautiful, difficult, idiosyncratic cars because of how they make us feel.
October was an exciting month to be an alfista. Alfa Romeo brought a new concept car to the Paris Motor Show, a vehicle it named Cuorerosso—red heart. In fact, it was a good month for car enthusiasts of every stripe. In the same week that Alfa showed the Cuorerosso in Paris, Porsche introduced its Mission S concept in New York, and Tesla finally unveiled the Roadster it had been promising for years. These three cars, each unique in their own way, share something important in common: each was built for a world in which the act of driving can be, and increasingly is, handed over to software.
All three cars are worth examining in their own right, as moments in the history of the automobile and in the history of business. But what makes them worth looking at together is that each gives a different answer to the same question—what is a car for once a machine can drive it? That question is the automotive version of one that leaders in every industry are facing right now. Once machines can do the work, what are people for?
Tesla makes the machine the star
The Tesla Roadster comes in four versions. The most eye-catching of them, the Rocket, uses compressed-air thrusters to lift the car off the ground and set it down again. Tesla estimates that its vehicle can reach 60 mph in 0.59 seconds. The faster versions produce a megawatt of power, and the company claims they can hit 230 mph, with downforce fans pulling them onto the road. Steering and braking are handled entirely by wire, through software, with no direct mechanical link.
Few companies would build a flying car simply to show that they can, and while I have no desire to drive one, I admire the ambition. Top Gear summed up precisely how I feel about the new Tesla when it described the Roadster’s abilities as mostly useless and completely captivating.
That verdict should not be read as a criticism. What Tesla is selling is spectacle. The car performs and the human watches, a relationship that fits perfectly with the priorities of a company whose bigger bet is on cars that drive themselves. In the world Tesla is building, the machine is the star, and the human is simply the audience.
Porsche puts the needle back
The same week, Porsche showed the Mission S in New York, a mid-engined concept for a new supercar line above the 911. For the venue, it chose the Queens pier where it had presented the 550 Spyder in 1953.
The pier was a gesture toward the past, and Porsche is clearly looking in the same direction for its future. There is no center screen and no passenger screen inside the car. Instead, your phone clips in and becomes the display. The driver faces five round gauges, and the tachometer has a real, physical needle.
This is not nostalgia. Porsche is under financial pressure, and CEO Michael Leiters is answering it with a bet on identity: a Porsche, he says, must be recognizable as a Porsche at first glance. A German engineering company with a reputation for performance has decided to compete instead on character. It has taken the screens out and put something mechanical back in. This is a design choice, but it is also a business decision, and I think a smart one.
Alfa Romeo names a car after the heart
The Cuorerosso that Alfa unveiled in Paris on October 12 is a 4.7-meter, four-seat coupe finished in a red that darkens almost to black as the light changes. One proposed setup pairs Alfa’s 2.9-liter V6 with a full hybrid system and all-wheel drive. The company presents the car as a manifesto rather than a preview of a production model.
The manifesto’s governing principle is Bellezza Necessaria—necessary beauty—which means keeping only what serves the driver. One instrument mode, Concentrato, shows drivers less information the more engaged they become. Where most technology competes for our attention, this mode hands it back to the road.
The Cuorerosso also uses steer-by-wire, the same technology Tesla has put in the Roadster, but here it serves a different purpose. Santo Ficili, CEO of Alfa Romeo and Maserati, put it plainly: “Technology, function and quality are always at the service of emotions and driving pleasure.”
Alfa has had its difficulties, as every alfista knows. But the brand has never been confused about why it exists. That is why it named this car after the heart.
What survives automation
AI is making capability abundant. A song, a video, an app, or a business plan can now be produced in a fraction of the time that it used to take. The engineering behind physical products is heading in the same direction. As the cost of turning ideas into products is slashed, the benefits that come with being the first to market with some new capability fall. The result is that capability can no longer, in most cases, be an enduring differentiator.
Tesla’s Roadster can reach 60 mph in 0.59 seconds, according to the company’s estimates. Someone will beat that, and when they do, the number will go from being the thing that defines the Roadster to just another line in a comparison table. The thrusters will lose their novelty the day a second company builds a car that leaves the ground. Once a capability is available to everyone, it stops saying anything about the company that has it.
What increasingly defines a company, instead, is its taste and the emotional pull that its taste creates. Taste is knowing what belongs and what does not. The three cars unveiled in October are three different answers to what belongs in an automobile. Tesla’s offering caters to those with a taste for spectacle, Porsche’s to those who look for character, and Alfa’s to those who look for feeling.
These three answers are arriving at a moment when the act of driving is itself becoming optional. It is natural to assume that once AI can drive the car and not just help design it, taste will matter less than ever. The thinking is that a world in which AI does the work is a world that runs on efficiency, and efficiency leaves no room for taste. The history of transportation suggests the opposite. The car made the horse unnecessary, but horses did not vanish. They became a passion. Nobody rides a horse today because it is the most efficient way to get somewhere. They ride because the act of riding matters to them. When a technology makes an activity unnecessary, the activity survives only as something people choose, and people choose with the heart. AI is doing this to driving, and it is about to do it to a great deal else.
What this means for leaders
Most of us do not run car companies, but the question that Tesla, Porsche, and Alfa have each answered in their own way is one that every leader now has to answer too: Once your capabilities can be matched, what makes people choose you?
• Do not compete on capability alone. Whatever AI helps you do today, it will help your competitors do before long. Capability earns attention, and attention is worth having, but it is not what makes anyone stay.
• Know what your taste is and who shares it. Tesla’s loyalists want spectacle, Porsche’s want character, Alfa’s want feeling. Each company knows exactly which it is offering. If you cannot say what belongs in your product and what does not, neither can your customers.
• Invest in judgment. AI can give you a hundred options at almost zero cost. What it cannot give you is the person who knows which of those belongs and which 99 you should throw away. That kind of judgment—itself a form of taste—is developed over years, and no model can generate it. Hire for it. Reward the people who say no and protect the people who decide what sits at the emotional core of your brand.
What we choose when we no longer have to
If the day comes when I no longer need to drive, I know I will still want to take my old Alfa Romeo out for a spin. It nourishes something in my heart and in my soul. It speaks to me in a way that goes far beyond the question of simple utility. It is precisely what I would choose to do with the increased freedom that comes when necessities are taken care of. As AI automates more and more of the realm of necessity, we will have to think harder about what is worth doing with the freedom we gain. Businesses will have to think harder, too, about what people want from that freedom and what they can offer that makes it worth having.
