The tortured development of Alfa Romeo's first SUV

Alfa Romeo recently confirmed plans to take on the Porsche Cayenne with an all-new luxury SUV.

It will be based on parent firm Stellantis’s largest car architecture and will prove crucial as the brand attempts to stimulate demand in the US. It’s a familiar formula – so much so that Alfa has actually been here before.

At the 2003 Geneva motor show it lifted the covers off the Kamal, a striking BMW X5 rival. It packed the most potent version of Alfa’s famed Busso V6, with 250bhp, but was due to get a punchier General Motors-sourced unit after launch.

Power was sent through all four wheels via three electronically controlled Torsen differentials and it rode on height-adjustable air suspension.

Its styling, overseen by Wolfgang Egger, was something of a greatest hits compilation: 8C coupé concept at the front, 147 hatchback at the rear. The Kamal was due to enter production in 2007 and would be based on the replacement for the 147, we reported.

But then all went quiet for more than two years, as Alfa engineers toiled without much in the way of funding.

By August 2005, the Kamal had gone from an evolved Fiat Stilo platform (adding air suspension and other such niceties) to the underpinnings of the larger 159 saloon.

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It had been repositioned from an X5 challenger to something closer to the X3 and its launch was brought forward to 2006.

That was most likely so that Alfa could tap the burgeoning crossover class and its huge profit margins, helping to paper over the estimated £4.8 billion crack in parent company Fiat’s finances.

Then, after Fiat merged Alfa and Maserati (a move that was notably echoed by Stellantis earlier this month, amid a major management reshuffle), the Kamal was set to be twinned with the similarly conceived Maserati Kubang.