Road Test

Your Say

Alfa Romeo Mito 1.4 TB Veloce

Test date 04 March 2009 Price as tested £15,495

For Gutsy performance, driving position, good looks, cabin ambience

AgainstUnresolved ride, unnatural steering, lifeless gearchange

Before Alfa Romeo decided on Mito (a meeting of Milan and Torino – locations for the Mito’s design and manufacturing respectively), Alfa’s new baby went under the codename Junior. Maybe Mito kept the marketing men happy, or perhaps the historic Junior tag is being held back. Either way, Junior nicely defined what the Mito is about and what Alfa hopes it will achieve.

For the Mito is Alfa Romeo’s first true supermini since the Alfasud, its 33, 145 and 147 models having been aimed at the larger family hatch market. And along with a new segment, Alfa is gunning for a new type of customer, one younger, hipper and, although cognisant of the Alfa brand, perhaps not so tied up in its history. Alfa, in short, wants to produce its Mini – with which any similarity in the name is purely coincidental. If Alfa succeeds, and the Mito is as successful as its popular supermini rival, it’ll pretty much guarantee the company’s future for the next few years.

The Mito undergoing the full road test treatment is the most powerful, top-spec 1.4 TB Veloce.

The Mito is the first really compact Alfa since the 1970s. And although it was initially dubbed Junior during development (being at least partly inspired by the 105-series 1300 Junior), through 2007 Alfa ran an internet competition to find a suitable name for the car. The shortlist included Milo, Mod, Nevo, Fira and Ventura, but the most popular was Furiosa. In the end Alfa chucked out the lot and settled on Mito, which wasn’t on the shortlist at all.