Alfa Romeo Junior review: this performance EV is good enough to signal a return to greatness
Junior? Somehow the name suited those lithe and lovely Alfa Romeo Bertone GT coupés of the Sixties, but these days the name seems a bit forced; like those American titans who insist on calling their offspring “Junior”. After chippy local politicians complained at the last hour about this car’s original name of Milano, however, something needed to be done; and quickly.
Then there was also the straw man story of faceless Eurocrats preventing Alfa Romeo from siting this car’s registration plate to the side of its elegant grille rather than in the centre, which turned out to be the purest anti-EU trickery.
As Alejandro Mesonero-Romanos, the head of the firm’s Centro Stile design centre, says: “It was a decision of practicality and aesthetics that meant we put the number plate under the shield [grille].” He says that while there are new EU requirements on registration plate placement, it is possible to get a derogation. He says he could have placed the number plate on one side, but it would have involved up to 100mm of supporting scaffolding underneath to get it vertical, so they didn’t. And there have been plenty of Alfas in the past with centrally-located registrations, so where’s the problem?
However the Milano naming spat is true, as politicians threw in their spanner claiming unenforceable rules on certificate-of-origin for this car, which is built at Fiat’s Tychy plant in Poland.
“It was an easy decision [to change the name],” said Jean-Philippe Imparato, Alfa Romeo’s chief executive, “because it’s politics and once you get stuck in politics, you can easily lose half your customers.”
Yet in winning the skirmish, Milan’s administrators might have made an implacable enemy of Alfa’s passionate boss. “What about the Ford Capri?” asked Imparato rhetorically, “or other cars named after places?” He shook his head, muttering darkly about disrespect; this story isn’t going to lie down and die…
Alfa’s second EV
Anyway, after last year’s Tonale, the smaller Junior represents the second EV and third SUV in the latest rebirth of the famous marque, formed in 1910 and tied to the mast of the blood-red Italian love affair with the automobile.
We dined in the firm’s fabulous museum at Arese, north-west of Milan, where sepia photographs of the bravest and most talented drivers of their generation stare out of simply gorgeous racing machines while a floor of concept cars contains some of the cleverest ideas from quite the cleverest designers and engineers.
Everyone loves an Alfa Romeo and they say that true drivers should own one at some time in their lives. The trouble is for a variety of reasons (poor build quality and parlous reliability, lacklustre marketing and terrible dealers, along with a revolving door of management and poor brand definition, to name but a few), too few take the plunge.
Since, well, forever, a succession of chief executives have tried to pull the company on track with wildly changing model plans and a series of Panglossian sales targets that at one time were up to almost half a million a year. As one former boss, Karl-Heinz Kalbfell (formerly of BMW) said to me during a beery evening at the Nürburgring many years ago: “Changing Alfa Romeo is like persuading the Pope to change his religion.”
A job for the head, not the heart
Imparato took the top job after turning around Peugeot, it’s clearly a career move made with his heart rather than his head, but he has kept clear sight on the prize. Alfa is going to eventually be an all-electric brand, it will produce a new model each year for the next four years, it will challenge in existing markets (read SUVs) and when the financials are showing an uplift it can then have fun with sports cars and the like.
It’s an ask and a half; for the last two years, Alfa’s total worldwide sales have been around 50,000 and 68,000, which is barely enough to feed the office cat. The Junior has a big task to perform.
It’s Alfa’s smallest SUV after the Stelvio and Tonale and it’s based on a Stellantis Group CMP II platform, which also underpins the Car of the Year-winning Jeep Avenger and forthcoming Fiat Abarth 600e. So, despite its humble roots, it comes with some polish pre-applied.
The range
This starts at £33,895 for the 156bhp base model version which has a 250-mile range. There are three trim levels: Elettrica, Speciale and the 240bhp Veloce, which is the model tested here.
There’s also a petrol-electric hybrid version that Alfa is still debating whether to import, but since EV sales are only 19 per cent of total UK car sales, it would be a bit of a gift to the opposition not to offer it. With the Stellantis Group’s 1.2-litre lively three-cylinder turbo engine and a battery, that might be the pick of the bunch, but for the moment this early drive was of the top EV Veloce model.
It’s a fairly radical rework of the platform, with a distinctive design that bears its “fierce owl” headlights and the silhouette of the cross and man-eating serpent depicted on the Alfa Romeo badge carried above the grille. It’s also reminiscent of the negative-space artwork of Giorgio Morandi, a Bologna-based artist. Lesser models get a wire mesh grille with the traditional Alfa Romeo script across the corner, which is equally memorable.
It looks good from the front and rear, but in profile it’s too generic “family SUV” for comfort. Alfa has often sprinkled magic on base-model family cars, but from side on this isn’t much of a looker.
Alfa has not left a stone unturned in the search for handling prowess, however.
Handling prowess
The front wheels have quite a pronounced negative camber for better self-centring and cornering grip, more stability and, dare I say it, better looks. There’s a new lower knuckle for the MacPherson strut front suspension to improve scrub radius (front geometry) to give more steering feedback and a purer on-centre response. There are also hydraulic bump stops for the dampers, which allow a softer approach to larger bumps without destroying the sharp handling that the engineering team were looking for. The electronically assisted steering has one of the fastest-ratio racks in the class.
While the 207bhp/254lb ft motor and the 54kWh gross (51kWh useable) battery are the latest out of the Stellantis group, the Junior also gets a bit of a first, a Torsen geared limited-slip differential, which partially ties the front wheels together under hard acceleration or braking.
This top model has an 11kW charger on-board as standard, while a heat pump is standard across the range with 100kW DC fast charging, which will give a 10-80kW charge in 30 minutes.
The range is quoted at 207 miles in the WLTP cycle, with efficiency rated at 3.83 miles per kWh. However, despite brisk progress around Alfa’s extensive test facility at Balocco in Italy, I achieved only 1.83m/kWh, which would give a theoretical range of only 99 miles (although if you drove like that on a public road you might as well pop your driving licence on the barbecue).
Inside job
The trim is untextured (prototype interiors rarely have the finished textures), although the general fit and finish is fine. The seats are wonderful; angular high-back sports shapes, they hold you like the embrace of a giant spider, and who cares if they restrict the knee room of rear-seat passengers. The boot is a respectable 400 litres.
It’s a Stellantis Group set of gear selection and drive mode switches on the central tunnel and a very old-school touchscreen set low on the facia, but some will love this – as well as the inclusion of separate volume and heater controls. Very Alfa, too; straight to the point, with few if any gimmicks.
On the road
Performance is quoted as a top speed of 124mph with 0-62mph in 5.9sec, quick but far from mercurial in hot-hatchback terms. Still, since there’s no waiting for a turbo to spin up or a transmission to find a gear, the Junior gains speed deceptively quickly.
Select Drive and Dynamic mode and we roll on to the historic Balocco test track, at one time Alfa’s secret development site, behind a Giulia Q4 piloted by one of the firm’s test drivers; to keep pace with them requires some serious commitment.
Rolling quite noisily, in fact, and there’s a fair bit of wind noise and rustle and rattle from these pre-production cars on Michelin Pilot Sport tyres.
You would expect it to go well on the circuit where it was developed, but not this well. Within 50 metres it’s clear this is a different order of Alfa after the lukewarm and disappointing Tonale. The steering is soft off the straight ahead. Ford does it better, but the feel and feedback when you start to turn is intuitive and builds as the corner force builds. In other words, the faster you go, the better this Alfa gets. Part of this is the aforementioned Torsen differential, which is a wonderful thing indeed.
Most hot hatchbacks have suspension designed to tuck the car farther into a corner when you lift off the accelerator pedal and the Alfa is no exception. The trouble is, to allow this to happen on a public road, you are already travelling too fast for comfort in the corner entry. The beauty of the Torsen is that you can travel briskly but safely into a corner and then press the accelerator early and the differential simply helps pull the car through, without the nose-wide understeer that most front-wheel-drive hot hatches exhibit.
And on a circuit, you can play games between the over-run characteristics of the chassis set-up and the action of the Torsen which, combined with the sharp steering and the progressive grip of the Michelins, makes it a super-scratcher, cornering at all angles but always with the driver in control.
The brakes feel a bit spongey, without a lot of grab on initial application, but they are progressive and only faintly started to fade after a lot of track use.
There are no steering-wheel paddles to increase the regeneration braking (Alfa doesn’t really believe in them), just a B (brake) mode on the gear selector, which works well. There is also supposed to be a variable noise, but I wasn’t alone in never finding how to switch it on.
The Telegraph verdict
In its pomp, Alfa Romeo made achingly gorgeous cars large and small, but not a lot of money. In more recent years it has been tugged between ambition and a reality of poor sales, while the Alfa Romeo story and its appeal fade like those evocative black and white prints in the museum.
What the Junior in this form does is tap into an Alfa story of tweaked, lightweight and good-looking small cars that dusted ordinary motoring with a bit of magic. It’s really good, but expensive and not a lot of private buyers are reaching out to EVs at all, let alone performance variants.
The proof of the pudding will be a year down the line when we drive the complete range, the hybrid and the less expensive models, which will take the lion’s share of sales.
The Junior Veloce is a great little car, let’s hope the rest of them keep up this standard.
The facts
On test: Alfa Romeo Junior (prototype)
Body style: five-door electric hot hatchback
On sale: now first deliveries Dec/Jan (156 arrives Sept/Oct)
How much? from £33,895 (as driven in Veloce trim, £42,295)
How fast? more than 124mph, 0-62mph in 5.9sec
How economical? 3.83 miles per kWh (WLTP Combined), 1.83m/kWh on track test see text
Electric powertrain: 54kWh gross (51kWh net) lithium-ion NMC battery, with synchronous electric motor driving the front wheels via a Torsen limited-slip differential. 11kW charger as standard, heat pump as standard across the range
Electric range: 207 miles (WLTP)
Maximum power/torque: 207bhp/254lb ft
CO2 emissions: 0g/km (tailpipe), 33g/km (CO2 equivalent well-to-wheel)
VED: £0
Warranty: three years/unlimited mileage (eight years/100,000 miles on battery)
The rivals
Cupra Born VZ
from £45,000
Honed by Cupra’s talented chassis set-up team, with help from the World Touring Car Championship driver Jordi Gené, the VZ has 326bhp, rear-wheel drive and a 79kWh battery pack that gives a range of 372 miles, with a 185kW charge speed, which means 10-80 per cent in 30mins. Top speed is 124mph, with 0-62mph in 5.7sec. It’s heavy (two tonnes) and that affects the steering feel and feedback, but the titivated suspension gives handling with a pleasing front-end grippiness and it’s good fun (for an EV).
Mini Clubman John Cooper Works
from £40,605
With a 306bhp 332lb ft 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo petrol engine, this not-so-little bolide will dash from 0-62mph in 4.9sec and up to 155mph. The eight-speed automatic gearbox and the engine are borrowed from the BMW 135i and it weighs a porky 1.73 tonnes, but there’s grip and grin in there in spades. Spec and trim options are myriad – but it’ll cost you.
Abarth 500e
from £33,364
Quite the most hilarious small electric SUV, with a 43kWh battery and a 153bhp/173lbft motor, which gives a top speed of 96mph, 0-62mph in 7sec and a pitiful range of 164 miles. Great chassis balance, but virtually no space for luggage and passengers. We’ll see what Renault’s forthcoming R5 does to knock this and the Alfa off their perches.