When Michelangelo finished David, he would have been so thrilled with the statue that he would have told it: “Parla!” In English, he wanted David to speak. Any visit to the Galleria dell’Accademia, in Florence, will give you the impression it could. After seeing the video above, with the Totem Automobili Alfa Romeo GT Electric, you could imagine Michelangelo ordering this automotive masterpiece to speak – and it would.

Seen just in renderings until very recently, the GT Electric is finally a reality – even if a limited and expensive one. Deutsche Welle REV even had the good idea of asking Julia Dorny to check this Giulia derivative in person. We have already told you about this fantastic electric retromod, but it is worth remembering the main points, especially now that it is alive.

Totem GT Electric

The GT Electric is based on the Alfa Romeo GT, a car also known among Alfa Romeo fans as 105 and 115 Series. Created over a shortened Giulia body, it was built from 1963 until 1977. Although it was quite a long career, this is the sort of car we would love to see in continuous production until it joined electric mobility, but that’s what conversions are for.

Totem Automobili put a 50.4 kWh battery pack that weighs just 350 kg (770 pounds) to power a 518 bhp, 692 pound-feet (940 Nm) electric motor where the combustion engine used to be. That allows the GT Electric to go from 0 to 100 km/h (62 mph) in 3.4 seconds. The car’s total weight is 1,410 kg, quite a bit more than the original car.

Totem GT Electric

The car structure was heavily revised to accommodate the battery pack, incorporating carbon fibre body panels and aluminium parts on the original structure. That allowed the GT Electric to have a McPherson suspension instead of the wishbone arrangement of the original car. The solid axle on the rear was also replaced by multilink.

The limited part about the GT Electric is that it will only have 20 units produced apart from the prototype, which bears the 00/20 number. According to Riccardo Quaggio – Totem Automobili’s CEO – each of them will be tailor-made for their future owners. With a price tag of €430,000 (approx. £385,000), that is not a surprise.

The car will “speak” through an Emula’s McFly sound emulation system that can make it reproduce the typical sound of Alfa Romeo’s engines – which fans repute to be almost musical. Sadly, that seems to be the wrong language. 

By embracing electric mobility, the Italian car company should give the GT Electric its own, unique voice. If the plan was to make it sound like a petrol-powered car, both electric car fans and alfisti may get the feeling this restomod should have kept a combustion engine from the start. Make Michelangelo proud, Totem Automobili.

Sources: DW REV and Totem Automobili