Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio long-term test

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.

At a stroke, it nearly doubles the output of even the most potent of those options, resulting in breathtaking performance that feels completely other-worldly in such a large, heavy car. Likewise the agile and entertaining handling, which is playful in a way you struggle to credit from a tall SUV, naturally given to oversteer and communicative on a cross-country blast in a way none of its peers can match.

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 anxiety between top-ups because the fuel tank is small (and the warning light comes on with a quarter left!).

This car feels like the last of a dying breed for which environmental concerns can go hang. As the automotive world moves towards an electrified future and protesters barricade the pumps, it’s increasingly hard to justify a vehicle like this. But that won’t stop it leaving a gap in my life almost as big as the sinkhole it has opened up in my bank account. 

Second Opinion

My time in the Stelvio was mostly spent with a Porsche Macan GTS for company, and I have no doubt that the Porsche is the more complete car. However, with its alluring exterior, more dramatic interior, and rear-biased handling that feels reminiscent of the Giulia QV’s, I’ll admit that, of the two, I fell harder for the Alfa.

Matt Prior

Love it:

Heart of the matter - The Stelvio’s outrageous Ferrari- inspired twin-turbo 2.9-litre V6 dominates its character.

Best of both worlds - I love how the drive controller allows you to soften off the dampers for road use in its most focused mode

Paddle positioning - The aluminium paddles look great and are well sited and long enough that they are never hard to find.

Loathe it:

Conspicuous consumption - You don’t expect a performance car to be frugal, but sub-20mpg is brutal and the tank is fairly small

More stop than start - Transmission and stop-start system tend to argue rather than converse, which can leave you stranded.

Final mileage: 9157

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A wedding 200 miles away and an outing on track show two sides of its character - 15 june

My sprocker spaniel is six years old, yet I still can’t get him to walk sensibly on a lead: he pulls until he nearly throttles himself. 

It’s in his nature to be sprinting after a scent, and he’s never happier than when he’s bounding untethered across fields, long ears flapping in the breeze. 

The Stelvio is a kindred spirit: it’ll reluctantly put up with dawdling town traffic, but it feels as if it’s straining at the leash, pushing against the brakes when in gear at the lights, and forever seeking a national speed limit sign.

So you can imagine its joy when it got a run-out on a test track during a recent photoshoot. The demonstration circuit at Bicester Heritage isn’t huge, but it was enough to give the Alfa a bit of exercise. Switching to Race mode dials everything – dampers, steering, power, response and particularly noise – up to 11, and the Stelvio is thrilling to drive quickly. 

Turn-in is sensational for such a big car, and the gears snap in with a gut punch, accompanied by a spectacular blare from the quad exhausts and an evil cackle on the overrun. With the torque vectoring set to ‘drift’, it constantly wants to oversteer out of corners, although with so much heft and a high centre of gravity, there’s a tendency to push on through tighter bends and it’s physical to muscle around.

There was further wind through its whiskers when colleague Max Edleston nabbed the keys for friends Sean and Heather’s wedding 200 miles away in Cheshire. Max was surprised at how easily the Alfa swallowed all his photography kit, as well as being impressed by whata good motorway companion it is. 

Only the adaptive cruise control drew criticism: it’s easy enough to operate but can be abrupt under braking.

The Quadrifoglio did an admirable job as a shuttle bus for the groom’s party, with usher Dan drawing the short straw of the middle seat in the back yet commenting on how much more space he had than expected. And it wasn’t upset by the rough country lanes around Max’s Cheshire home: “I like the fact that you can soften off the dampers when it’s in Dynamic mode.”

Max even got a buzz out of trying to increase the predicted range with a light right foot (his best was 21.5mpg), but he did get a ticking off from his mum after a noisy cold start threatened to wake the neighbours.

Love it: 

Getting a shift on 

Not only do they look great, but the aluminium paddles are also perfectly placed and long enough that they can be operated even when there’s steering lock on.

Loathe it:

Wide load

I’m paranoid about the alloys, which stick out proud of the car’s body, and my worst fears were confirmed by a scuff in a narrow parking bay. Oh, the shame...

Mileage: 7130

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Life with an Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio: Month 2

The Stelvio is a thirsty beast... - 11 May

About 90% of the miles I cover are around town, which has destroyed my car’s average consumption – currently circa 18mpg. Reader Simon Raybould bought his Quadrifoglio as a used car last year and has put 20,000 miles of mixed driving on it. He’s averaging around 22mpg and even managed to see 30.3mpg on a run – with photographic evidence to prove it (above). 

Mileage: 6530

From booting our V6 SUV to utilising its boot, there’s a lot here to like - 4 May

The logic of combining outrageous power levels with a fat, heavy, off- roader-style body is hard for some to comprehend, but there’s a good reason why cars such as the Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio have become increasingly popular.

Properly engineered, as this QV undoubtedly is, they can be a hoot to drive, yet they bring with them all of the qualities that have made SUVs so ubiquitous: the commanding driving position, the lofty sense of status and the family-friendly practicality of a big five-door bodyshell.

Once a week, I help out at my local community food shop, restocking it with crates of tins, boxes and bags, so need a car with a utilitarian bent. And the QV is ideal: its 525-litre boot isn’t huge, but it’s bigger than a Volvo XC60’s and ideally shaped to take three stacking boxes across, without any annoying wheel-well intrusion. The rear seats fold to leave a fairly flat load area, albeit with a slight slope. Usefully, there’s no load lip – ideal for lugging in those heavier boxes.

And my favourite detail is the four remote releases for the rear seatbacks: one on either side at the back of the boot, so you don’t have to lean in, and one on either side beneath the seat squab. I’ve never seen the latter before, and it’s great if you’ve half-filled the boot before realising you need more space.

An unexpected benefit of lugging stuff around in a car with supercar- stiff suspension is that speed bumps hold no fear: even fully laden, there’s barely a drop in ride height, and the huge torque and clever dampers mean you barely notice the extra weight.

It’s not completely perfect, though. As I’ve said previously, the slope of the tailgate eats into a bit of outright storage space, but more frustrating are the fiddly parcel shelves: as well as a lightweight retractable cover behind the seats, there’s a semi-rigid fabric infill that clips to the tailgate itself. It’s all a bit Heath Robinson and such a faff that I usually leave it at home and rely on the tinted glass to keep my cargo safe from prying eyes.

The only other quibble is that the tailgate has no hands-free operation. That might make me sound a touch demanding, but this is a £78k car.

The tailgate was also the source of the Alfa’s only failure of any note, albeit self-inflicted. After I overrode the sensors that were refusing to let the boot close, shoving it when it was particularly full, it disabled the automation until I employed that old IT trick: turning it off and on again.

Love it 

Braking bling

The QV attracts comment wherever it goes, most commonly about the yellow brake calipers. If you’re an exhibitionist, it’s £450 well spent.

Loathe it

Flat sountrack

The twin-turbocharged V6 is an epic unit, with power throughout the rev range. I just wish it would sound a little more exciting.

Mileage: 6288

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Life with an Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio: Month 1

Ergonomics have vastly improved - 27 April

Alfa Romeo ergonomics used to be a running joke: quirky driving positions, offset pedals and weirdly placed switchgear. Who can forget the gearlever blocking the radio on the 75 or the speedo in the middle of the Alfetta’s dashboard? The Stelvio is hard to fault, however: the worst I’ve found is air-con controls that are easy to nudge when you place a drink in the cupholders. 

Mileage: 5850

Can a trip to the countryside tame our Latin thoroughbred’s thirst for fuel? - 20 April

Reading through past Autocar tests of the Stelvio, it’s clear that we’ve always enjoyed the way the big Alfa Romeo drives.

Where it has tended to fall down, however, has been in its usability as a family SUV – in particular the way that rather focused character can make it a bit of a chore to live with as a daily driver. So what better way to test that criticism than a weekend away – complete with kids and dogs – to visit relatives in the West Country?

The first challenge was overcome pretty easily: packing. For all its high-performance potential, the Stelvio is, at its heart, a pretty decently packaged SUV. There are a few thoughtful touches, too, such as a neat little concealed hook so you can suspend the boot-floor panel from the boot aperture while you pack the underfloor area, Tetris- style, with smaller items.

The luggage bay itself isn’t vast, at 525 litres with the seats up, but it’s a good, square shape – although the tapering roof line meant I had to pack carefully to place the dogs where they would get plenty of head room.

Key among our road testers’ criticism was that the Quadrifoglio was “too unyielding and hardcore”, even on comparatively smooth motorway. I can’t help wondering if the optional carbonfibre-shell buckets fitted to that particular test car were a part of the problem.

Mine has the standard sports seats, and while they’re undoubtedly firmly stuffed and supportive, they’re also really comfortable, with a good range of adjustment including squabs that extend to provide support for my long thighs. In the back, the kids complain that the rear bench is a bit upright, but they have plenty of leg room, even with my seat set well back.

The ride is certainly on the hard side, particularly for an SUV, but the active double-wishbone front and multi-link rear suspension set-up is well damped in its softer settings and never bothers me at speed, even over ruts and expansion gaps.

Around town, it’s more noticeably jiggly but still better than numerous supposedly ‘sporty’ machines with hard springs and cheap dampers.

And there’s little doubt that it’s well worth putting up with when you factor in the rewards available as you turn off the motorway and onto twisting country lanes, where the Alfa really excels. 

Here that magnificent V6 engine can be let off the leash once again and the ZF eight-speed automatic can be set to manual mode, when it’s at its most responsive.

The gearbox is generally pretty good as an auto, too, although it can be frustrating in Eco mode, when it can argue with the start/stop system – occasionally leaving you stranded right at the very moment when you want to burst out of a junction or into a gap on a roundabout.

But perhaps the best thing to come out of a long journey has been the increase in ‘economy’. The inverted commas are there because my new best is a still-meagre 22.6mpg, but that was enough to boost my average over nearly 1000 miles by a whole 1mpg. With petrol prices continuing to skyrocket, I’ll take what I can get.

That aside, the Stelvio continues to be a daily pleasure. If this is what a chore feels like, I’m happy to take on a greater workload.

Love it

Driving position

Forget those age-old Italian- car clicheÃs: after a bit of fiddling with seat and wheel, this one fits me like a glove.

Loathe it 

Black badging

I realise that matt-black is somehow seen as ‘sporty’, but when the rest of the styling looks so classy, the badges on the back just look a bit naff.

Mileage: 5661

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Peak performance is hidden behind two subtle buttons 13 April 

Two buttons add magic. The first is red and ignites the 503bhp fireworks display. The other took a while to find, in the centre of the driving mode selector. Crank that to the extreme settings and the button illuminates. Press it and the dampers soften instantly (to ‘mid’ in Race, ‘soft’ in Dynamic), giving all the naughtiness, without dislodging your fillings. 

Mileage: 5332 

Welcoming the Alfa Romeo Stelvio to the fleet - 6 April 2022

I am not sure there’s a bigger automotive cliché than the hackneyed ‘you’re not a true petrolhead until you’ve owned an Alfa Romeo’ line. Nor a less accurate one.

Perhaps I was simply born into the wrong era, taking my first breath just at the point when the Latin giant’s last truly great cars were drawing their last, and the modern era of front-wheel drive, poor steel and unreliability was getting under way.

As I grew up, the name made great by the likes of the Le Mans-winning 8C, the groundbreaking Giulietta and the jewel-like Giulia was hitting rock bottom with a badge-engineered Datsun Cherry, so it’s maybe not surprising that I’ve never felt the need to justify my passion for cars by rehoming a posh Fiat.

Until now, that is. Because Alfa Romeo is going through a renaissance. Spearheaded by the fabulous Giulia saloon and its Stelvio SUV wingman, it will soon be reinforced by the compact hybrid Tonale, the firm's first full EV and more. The Alfa Romeo Giulia is beginning to appear where once the BMW 3 Series was the default choice, although the Alfa Romeo Stelvio remains relatively rare in the UK despite the current SUV love-in.

And what an SUV, particularly in flagship Quadrifoglio form: 503bhp, 0-60mph in 3.8sec, 176mph flat out, and if there is a better-looking offroader, I have yet to see it. Certainly, the Porsche Macan and Porsche Cayenne – the Alfa straddles their markets, bigger than the former and smaller than the latter – can’t hold a candle to it in terms of pure visual appeal. That style is further aided on my car by the optional Misano Blue paint, black 21in rims and yellow calipers (costly at £450, but particularly arresting), yet even in its lowlier forms, this is a very attractive shape.

But are looks enough to pick a Stelvio over a Porsche? Where the German opposition does steal a march is in interior quality, something Alfa worked hard on with the model’s most recent facelift in late 2020. Once you get used to the slightly low-set steering wheel, the driving position is great. It’s roomy, too, with a decent boot. The improved finishes are noticeable, with lashings of carbonfibre, a leather-wrapped dash and soft plastics where you come into contact with them.

Crucially, though, the sense of quality is miles ahead of where Alfa used to be – not necessarily the materials themselves, but the way the car has been assembled. A slight clang to the doors aside, it feels solid and properly screwed together. It might not have achieved parity with the class best – the infotainment system in particular lacks a bit of logic – but it looks and feels special, which is just what you expect for near-£80k car with a few choice options.

You only have to press the big red fun button in the middle of the steering wheel to know where that money has been spent. In essence a Ferrari V8 with a couple of cylinders lopped off, the 3.0-litre twin-turbo V6 is a monster. There are few SUVs this side of a Lamborghini Urus or Aston Martin DBX with more than 500bhp, and even without sophisticated launch control, the way this 1830kg lump leaves the line or picks up in the mid-range is just outrageous. I’d love a bit more noise – only with drive mode set to Race does it unleash real anger – but the flexibility born of 443lb ft of torque from just 2500rpm means you’re never left looking for more performance.

Best of all, a 7min 51.7sec lap of the Nürburgring in 2017 – a record for an SUV at the time – betrays a chassis that’s more than a match for the engine. With double wishbones up front and a multi-link rear, plus adaptive dampers all round, it’s brilliantly tied down and turns in with almost unbelievable alacrity for such a big car. I’m still learning the steering, which offers good initial sensations yet lacks feel when you’re approaching the limit of the Pirelli P Zeros’ adhesion, but I love the way the torque is delivered to the rear wheels, allowing you to adjust your line as you would in a sports car. Most of the time, this is a pure rear-driver, only delivering up to 50% of the power to the front wheels when it detects slip.

Even this soon into our relationship, however, there is a rather large elephant… not in the room, but under the bonnet. And it is very, very thirsty. The official figures are pessimistic enough, but if you do mainly town driving, 13-14mpg is not unusual. At a time when fuel prices are soaring, that’s pretty painful.

The Stelvio is illogical, uncompromising and, if we’re honest, downright irresponsible. But also wonderful. Whether I can live with the environmental guilt – or the wallet-busting bills – over the coming months remains to be seen, but I’m going to have a good time finding out.

Second Opinion

Few would put the Stelvio in the same league as its German SUV opponents for cabin quality and overall luxury appeal. But it does remain a roomy, good-looking, desirable family car with a discernible helping of sporting soul. As such, there will always be a place, and a customer, for it.

- Matt Saunders

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Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio specification

Prices: List price new £74,949 List price now £78,719 Price as tested £77,849

Options: Driver Assistance Pack £1000, 21in wheels £750, Misano Blue paint £700, yellow brake calipers £450

Fuel consumption and range: Claimed economy 23.9mpg Fuel tank 64 litres Test average 19.7mpg Test best 24.0mpg Test worst 14.5mpg Real-world range 277 miles

Tech highlights: 0-62mph 3.8sec Top speed 176mph Engine V6, 2891cc, twin- turbocharged, petrol Max power 503bhp Max torque 443 lb ft Transmission 8-spd automatic, 4WD Boot capacity 525 litres Wheels 21in, alloy Tyres 255/40 R21 (f), 285/35 R21 (r) Kerb weight 1830kg

Service and running costs: Contract hire rate £885.94 CO2 267g/km Service costs None Other costs None Fuel costs £1527.57 Running costs inc fuel £1527.57 Cost per mile 38 pence Faults None