Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio - Test Comparison

By the time Alfa and Fiat can provide the dealership experience of BMW or Lexus we will be long gone unfortunately. The dealer experience is pretty much as it was 50yrs ago. Hell, I can walk on the service area floor, walk under the car and talk to the mechanic etc etc and no one will say a word, kind of like that actually but big big difference from BMW and Lexus.

 

That sounds good actually, as long as the mechanic is knowledgeable.

 

Engine packaging on the Giulia QV vs. the competition.

Engine right at the back of the engine compartment, up against the bulkhead, behind the front wheels, air intakes running straight to the front of the car.

Very Ferrari'esque:
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You mean there's an engine in there buried under all that black plastic

 

The plastic is less attractive, too much of it as well, I'll give you that......

 

good view for alfa.

its even worse if you compare to audi using fwd architecture. motor is actually in front of the front wheels! that's why they understeer so much. don't know why they don't get more grief over that either. big design flaw for audi

 

I wish they could have gone more this route. A turbo will have more covered but they did not even make the head covers look good on the Giulia V6. It was meant to be covered from the beginning. Lost chance to show off a real gem of a motor when viewed by the owners.
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Somehow they've been doing that for decades, even the original Audi Quattro in the early "80 had that problem.

The 2017 S4 (not too bad, but still a lot of engine in front of the front wheels).
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The 3.6 0-60 has to be taken with a grain of salt. Car and Driver often gets numbers way lower than others. I believe they got 3.6 with the 718 Boxster S 4 cylinder turbo. I test drove that car and thought is was marginally faster than my 981 S . But not close to 3.6 car. With that said, the new Alfas are lovely to look at and fast. We will see if they can approach German quality and teutonic structure.

 

Briefly Drove the Giulia Quadrofoglio yesterday.

Overall impression: Impressed.This car is a winner if it proves to be reliable. Design is good and it offers a clear alternative to its German rivals.

Design:
First, some "neat" features on the exterior. The hood is a giant piece of carbon fiber that is exposed on the underside. Really nice. Also, there is a nice carbon front spoiler that moves.

The interior is very clean. Not a lot of buttons crowding the dashboard like the BMWs. Very nice display in front of the driver.

Driving impressions:

Note, the drive was pretty short--but still picked up on a few things.

Steering: Ferrari like in that it is very light--yet feels precise. Stark contrast to the German rivals--and I really liked it personally.

Sound: Pretty good. In "race mode" the car gets noticeably louder as the valves open. Nice little backfire on aggressive high RPM shifts. Even a little burble on down shifts. Car is very quiet in all other modes. A good mod may be to be able to open valves in all modes.

Handling. Very limited here as it was a short drive and roads were wet. However, the wet roads gave me a chance to feel how the electronics of the car behave. On "overly spirited" out of corner acceleration the computers also felt "ferrari like". Rather than bogging the car down by aggressively cutting, the systems almost seemed to encourage yet control a little bit of drifting. The car feels super playful.

Another note, throttle response was super sharp in race mode--yet almost too weak in the other modes as far as I could tell. This may be because I did not have enough time to play with the settings properly. Also, I suspect this is something you would adjust too if you were driving this car frequently--so probably not a big deal.

Really thing this car is going to be a winner.

 

how was the trans on test drive? that's the achillies heel to me. zf slushbox instead of dct could ruin great platform

 

How was the steering feel? I see that it was light, but how was it in terms of feel?

 

I thought the transmission was fine. Came to the drive driving a BMW M5 DCT. Alfa transmission is definitely smoother off the line as you would expect. I found the shifts to be plenty fast..Not as crisp as dct..but still fast. For a daily driver maybe even better than the dct...Obvious caveat is that it was a short drive..but I think if the transmission was really bad I would have noticed..

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Was a pretty short drive. But compared to the BMW M5 I came in with nothing seemed to be lacking there. I have a preference for the light Alfa steering..But not necessarily because there was significantly more feel. For a better considered/deeper report on feel I would have to have driven it more..

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Engine cover on the Giulia contains the air filter and covers the oil filter as well.

 

I'm one who is disappointed in the 458 dct. Not organic enough. It's like some programmer decided to "add emotion".

I do agree today car engines look like toys with all the pointed plastic covers.

 

Agree---DCT maybe good for super frequent driving and certainly highly refined. However, the late generation F1s (as in Scuderia/16M) are pretty special. Very visceral/mechanical feeling with a bit of personality.

 

Thanks!

 

Agree.
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Sadly Maserati also went the same route. But when you look at formidable V6 it's just not very pretty unlike so many of their previous engines. Everyone is going this route. There's just so much stuffed into engine bays now that a mask is the easiest way to "tidy things up".

 

I care 100x more about how the engine performs/reliability than I do about how it looks. I don't plan on driving with the hood up any time soon.

 

Italian cars have and always will be about the wonderful engines and how they look. If you only want reliability then buy a Toyota "sportscar".

This V6 90 degree Turbo could have looked just as good as the Alfa 8C in the engine bay if they had done the head covers and plenum better. This was a missed chance on Alfa's part. Even the old Alfa Busso V6 sedans from the 1990's had that wow factory when viewing the engine. Great Italian car engines should have a wonderful sound and should look good. Funny thing is under all the plastic this one probably does look pretty good.

 

Not really.

With air filter and ducts in place:
https://www.evernote.com/l/AQWMnN34TnNGJYtyj1VzLZZqkwmMS1SVR-oB/image.png

Without:
https://www.evernote.com/l/AQXuamZtsDBLCZjRhKzaUxsjKi_i2TvEpEoB/image.png
https://www.evernote.com/l/AQXs5PpRWM9PO7MiRp4Rd1Uw0b8vSyUHb0UB/image.png

 

I'm in Italy right now and got a Guilia Diesel rental (yeah I know not the QF) - but after 1,300 K/M over 5 days - gotta say even the base model was a delight...

The handling was the star of course. The looks - killer. Comfortable, but a bit stiffer then say German counterparts.

The 6 speed manual was great. My only real complaint was the Navi on the dash was very much an afterthought - the space assigned to it was not designed for the eventual unit that is installed - folks that get it will see what I mean.

over all - an awesome car - I can only imagine that the QF is heaven.

 

Sounds like maybe the car you rented has the 6.5" infotainment screen rather than the 8.8" one. Being a rental there's a good chance the screen between the speedo and the rev counter may be the base 3.5" unit and not the 7".