As fanboys of flairy Italian horsepower with stylish bodies riding on proven platforms, we've been gripping the edge of our seats waiting to see the results of Alfa Romeo's recent reinvention. And then the Giulia Quadrifoglio hit our driveway and stole our hearts. But now its stablemate, the Alfa Romeo Stelvio, is beginning to trickle out of the factory and a lucky few have gotten to drive it in order to see how the lifted and bloated Giulia gets by even without the 505 horsepower V6 from Ferrari.

Making this drive event more fitting was the fact that Alfa Romeo sent drivers to the Stelvio Pass, the winding road that this Alfa is named after. With a name like that, Alfa Romeo is trying to convey that, as the automaker's Head of Marketing and Communications for North America Pieter Hogeveen told us, "this is an SUV for the S curves."

The only problem was that when journalists arrived to test the SUV, they found the road blanketed in snow. No matter though, because the Stelvio is endowed with an all-wheel drive system that cleverly intervenes when it senses slip, making this the perfect year-round cruiser for any road, curvy or not. Thanks to flat cornering, a shared wheelbase with the Giulia, and the epic Giorgio platform underpinning this beast, it handles anything and everything that comes its way with relative ease.