As promised, the students at the Istituto Europeo di Design in Turin arrived in Geneva this year with their vision for what a new four-door Alfa Romeo should look like. Called Gloria, the concept was designed by 20 transportation design grad students under the supervision of the Centro Stile Alfa Romeo. Like most IED design studies, the Gloria exists essentially as a full-scale mock-up with no actual running gear, but was said to have been designed to incorporate a V6 or V8 turbo engine – just like the ones Maserati has developed.

Penned with the American and Asian markets in mind, the avant-garde design is as sleek as they come, with narrow slits for headlamps, portico doors and floating silver-tone roof frames. But it still incorporates some traditional elements, like Alfa's signature shield grille and a pair of leather hood straps embossed with the cloverleaf emblem that has adorned performance-oriented Alfas for decades. With the Italian automaker said to be working on a mid-size sedan of its own, potentially to share its underpinnings with the upcoming Maserati Ghibli, aspects of this design could find their way from the show stand into the showroom before we know it.