Used Alfa Romeo Giulia long-term test: report 7

The car 2019 Alfa Romeo Giulia 2.2 JTDM-2 190 Speciale  

Run by Mark Pearson, used cars editor

Why it’s here To find out if buying a used Alfa is now an undertaking to be considered with both the head and the heart

Needs to Add a dash of Italian charisma to the daily grind, as well as cope admirably with all that an executive car should do

Mileage 4952 List price new (2019) £37,795 Price new with options £41,765 Value now £28,000 Test economy 36.6mpg Official economy 51.4mpg

9 June 2020 – Sitting low with places to go

A little time away from the things you enjoy only makes them more pleasurable when you return to them.

After the recently enforced reduction in driving time, it was a joy to once again take the Alfa Romeo Giulia out on some of my favourite roads. Whatever small criticisms you can lay against this car – and so far they have all been small – you can’t deny it’s great fun to drive, and there’s a real pleasure to be had savouring that quick steering and blipping through gearchanges using the sensually tactile paddles located behind that handsome steering wheel.

This all coincided with a spell of good weather, too, made all the more pleasurable by playing around with my car’s £1250 optional panoramic sunroof. This has an electrically operated blind for keeping the excess sun out on the hottest of days, but I'd say its major virtue is how well it keeps the interior bright and the mood up, even on gloomy days.

However, starting afresh like this with an old partner you also begin to notice those small foibles that you’d previously gotten so used to that you faced them daily without even noticing them.

For instance, I sit low in the Giulia – which is good, and deliberate – but I hadn’t before been aware that visibility out of my driver’s side window is quite limited as a result, especially because the window itself is unusually small and there’s also a whopping big door mirror to contend with.

There’s also a stylish and quite thick A-pillar, and the effect of all these things is to make you slightly unaware of what’s going on on that side if you’re negotiating a roundabout or entering a multi-storey car park.  One gets used to it, but it takes some time to relearn where to place the car accurately. Of course, having not driven much recently, and being very old, the problem may well lie with me, but either way I was, for the first few journeys, conscious of it.

However, it wasn’t nearly enough to dampen my enthusiasm, and nor was a trip to the newly reopened local tip.  Of course, a saloon is not going to be terribly practical here, but nonetheless by making use of the back seats of the Alfa Romeo Giulia I managed to get rid of quite a substantial amount of garden waste.

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