The GodFather Posted July 7, 2022 Posted July 7, 2022 Life with an Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio: Month 3 It’s thirsty and expensive to live with, but did we still fall for our fiery family car? - 29 June The Stelvio is a curious contradiction. It’s an incredibly rare sight on our roads – particularly in 503bhp, £80k Quadrifoglio form – yet it feels oddly familiar. That’s probably because the firm has been making overtures about its first SUV since the Kamal concept car of 2003, even though it took another 13 years to become a production reality. And what a reality. This is a machine that looks far better in the metal than in photographs, successfully pulling off the ‘Giulia on stilts’ look thanks to thickly muscular haunches, huge teledial alloys and neat integration of that shield-shaped grille – although, for my money, the car looks even better from the rear, where the quad tailpipes and vast rear tyres add real aggression. Those who have joined the exclusive club of Stelvio ownership seem to share a kinship. I’ve seen fewer than a dozen other examples since mine arrived, yet on several of those occasions, there has been a wave of recognition exchanged – as if we both know something that the legions of BMW X3, Audi Q5 and Volvo XC60 owners don’t. But what is that, exactly? It’s not that the Alfa is any better built or equipped than any of those cars, although I’ve had no complaints on either score. The infotainment could do with a bigger screen, but it’s much more responsive than many others I could name and most of the items you expect to find on a luxury car are here. The only glaring omission for me is the lack of a head-up display. I love the interior, too. It doesn’t feel as ‘premium’ as the likes of a Porsche Macan but, like the rest of the car, it feels special and oozes character. Embraced by those hip-hugging seats, grasping the beautifully finished leather wheel with Alcantara inserts, there are few places I’d rather be. However, my wife, who is a little on the short side, did find getting up and over the pronounced side bolsters tricky. Once inside, none of the family had any complaints: I could have done with a little more cubbyhole storage space, but overall the practicality is good, with a large, well-shaped boot (albeit featuring a silly, fiddly two- piece cover) and decent rear space. The back seats are a touch upright, but rear passengers are otherwise well looked after with charging points and individual ball vents. Some testers have complained about the unyielding ride, but we all found it comfortable on long motorway trips. Yet none of the above is the reason for that friendly ‘Stelvio wave’. It’s down to the indefinable rather than the quantifiable: the way this car makes every drive feel special, with charisma from every pore of its elegantly stitched leather, every carefully styled detail, every bark from its quad pipes and every chirrup from its vast Pirelli P Zeros. And that sense is only amplified by the Quadrifoglio, which turns the Stelvio’s charms up to 11 by swapping the 2.0-litre turbo petrol and 2.2-litre turbo diesel four-pots of lesser models for the outrageous 2.9-litre twin-turbo petrol V6 shared with the Giulia Quadrifoglio and GTAm. The temptation is to crank the drive controller round to Dynamic (or Race if you want the full noise) and flickdownacoupleofratioswiththe beautifully tactile paddles to indulge in another charge. It was while doing this that we encountered our only glitch with the Alfa: fail to pull the paddle for an upchange quickly enough and it can hit the limiter, confusing the system and causing an engine warning light to f lash as it drops back into Normal drive mode while it recovers its composure. The other problem with enjoying all of that performance is that you need to be prepared to pay for it. Just because it looks like a big SUV, that doesn’t mean it has the running costs of an ordinary family car. It’s already demanding its first, 9000-mile service and I’ve been warned it will need tyres after 14,000 – a four-figure sum for the Pirellis that suit it so well. Then there’s the fuel consumption. After the first few tanks returned MPG in the mid-teens, I got a lot more careful and managed to eke out an average nudging 20mpg, but that doesn’t prevent EV-style range. https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/alfa-romeo/long-term-reviews/alfa-romeo-stelvio-quadrifoglio-long-term-review
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