New Porsche Macan T vs Alfa Romeo Stelvio Veloce: costs
What happens when a sporting brand turns its hand to creating a sensible SUV? We spend a day at the races to find out...
Buying and owning
Costs, equipment, reliability, safety and security
As well as being cheaper to buy outright, the Alfa Romeo Stelvio is the only car here on which you can get a discount; you can use our New Car Buying service to secure this. Porsche doesn't do discounts; you either pay full price or try not to let the door hit you on the way out.
So, the Stelvio should walk this section, then? Sadly not. One of the reasons why people are willing to pay full price for their Porsche is that this blue-chip brand has among the strongest resale values of any car manufacturer, and the Porsche Macan regularly features in our top 10 slowest-depreciating cars. In other words, the Stelvio is likely to lose £12,500 more of its value than the Macan over three years; that could have paid for a rather nice used Seat Leon as a second car.
Despite costing more to insure, the Macan is much cheaper to service, plus it managed to return better fuel economy on our test loop (27.6mpg, versus 25.9mpg for the Stelvio), even though the Stelvio is officially more efficient.
Neither car is a shrewd choice for company car drivers, because they both occupy the highest (37%) tax bracket. However, anyone buying on PCP finance will be very keen on the Macan; thanks in no small part to those high resale values, it's around £200 per month cheaper to buy on a PCP deal, based on a three-year contract with a customer deposit of £5500 and a limit of 10,000 miles per year.
You get a few more standard luxuries with the Stelvio. While both cars have heated front seats and heated steering wheels, only the Stelvio comes with full leather seats (although black leather is a no-cost option on the Macan), adaptive cruise control, keyless entry and wireless phone charging. The Macan strikes back with brighter LED headlights (the Stelvio's are older xenon units).
As for safety, it's worth noting that the Stelvio's five-star Euro NCAP score dates from 2017, since when tests have become a lot more stringent. The Macan's results, meanwhile, are no longer valid, dating from 2014. By 2017 standards, the Stelvio was found to provide good protection for adults in the front, but it protected children less well. Only the Stelvio has automatic emergency braking as standard; you have to specify adaptive cruise control with your Macan to get this feature. If the Macan was retested by Euro NCAP today, it would be heavily penalised for that omission.
Best sports SUVs 2024 reviewed and rated - and those to avoid
If you want performance as well as practicality and an elevated driving position, the sports SUVs in our top 10 should be on your shortlist. We also reveal the models we'd avoid
