Car review: Alfa Romeo Stelvio

The SUVs I don’t loathe, I dislike intensely. I can’t see the point of them. So I was ready to hate this Alfa Stelvio.

The Alfa Romeo Stelvio: the only SUV that’s quite tempting.

I’ll be honest with you. I loathe all the current crop of so-called SUVs, except those I simply dislike intensely. I cannot see the point of driving around in a car that’s slower, more expensive and thirstier than a normal saloon or estate. It just seems idiotic.

But then I had to make a brief trip to Tuscany recently, where I found a man offering me the keys to Alfa Romeo’s new Stelvio. Named after a remote Alpine pass in northern Italy, this is a direct rival of the Audi Q5 and all the other mid-range jacked-up estates whose names I can’t be bothered to remember. In short, it’s a Giulia saloon on stilts, and I was determined to hate every bit of it.

The man was very keen to have his photograph taken with me and to say how much he enjoyed a program called Top Gear, but I wasn’t listening. I was thinking: “What in the name of all that’s holy was Alfa Romeo thinking?” If you have a heritage as glamorous and as achingly cool as Alfa’s, why would you want to make a bloody school-run car? That is like Armani deciding to make plastic shopping bags.

Alfa’s engineers are at pains to explain that, while it may look like an SUV, it doesn’t feel like one to drive. They say all the power from the engine is sent to the rear wheels, but if traction is lost, up to half the power is sent instantly to the front. They speak about carbon-fibre prop shafts and much lightweight aluminium in the body, and I stood there thinking: “Yes, but it’s still a bloody carrier bag.”

I had much the same sense of teeth-gnashing rage when I first encountered Maserati’s Levante, and that turned out to be just as bad as I’d feared. But as the man brought over more friends for more selfies, I started to gaze more carefully at the Stelvio, and there was no getting round the fact that, actually, it’s quite good looking. Eventually it was time to step into the Stelvio, and there was also no getting round the fact it was a nice place to sit. Way, way nicer than the Audi.

There’s some genuine sculpture in there. You get the impression in a Q5 that the dash was built with all the care of a kitchen worktop. Alfa has made something worth looking at. It’s an Italian thing. It’s why Siena is a better place to sit and people-watch than Dortmund.

EMBARGO APPLIES - A sketch of the Alfa Romeo Stelvio SUV (embargo 5am AEST 17 Nov 2016). Picture: Supplied.

Setting the satnav, however, was a challenge. This is because every town in Italy has 5000 letters in its name and when you finally manage to type them in, the satnav asks which Santa Lucia del Menolata di Christoponte you would like to set as the destination. And it turns out there are 5000 towns with that name. Eventually, though, I selected the right town and fired up the engine. The diesel engine. Oh, dear Lord. A diesel Alfa Romeo SUV.

The funny thing is that, because everyone in Italy has a diesel-powered car, it didn’t feel all that weird to be clattering out of the car park. And then it felt fine, because soon I was on an autostrada, where it felt very powerful. The figures say it’ll go from 0 to 100km/h in 6.6 seconds, which is good, but it’s the mid-range surge that impresses most. And, despite the power and the torque, this engine is considerably cleaner than the diesel Porsche puts in its Macan. Alfa says it’ll do almost 4.8 litres per 100km.

So it’s as fast as the badge would suggest, but does it handle as well as Alfa promises? Well, obviously, as it’s more than 17cm higher than the saloon and has longer springs, it’s squidgier, which would be fine if Alfa hadn’t given it the same superfast steering setup. The tiniest movement of the wheel causes a big change of direction, which is great when you are on a track in a low-riding “car”, but when you are on the autostrada, on stilts, with a Ritmo up your chuff and a lorry up front that has suddenly wandered into your lane because the driver is watching porn rather than the road ahead, it can be a bit alarming.

It takes time to learn to think your way round corners, but when you get there, I must say this is a genuinely exciting car to drive. It doesn’t feel as cumbersome as all the other SUVs, and you get the impression it was engineered by people who were involved because they wanted to be. Not because they’d done something wrong.

And because of that — because it’s a big, practical car with a huge boot and folding seats and lots of cubbyholes that’s also an Alfa Romeo — it’s the only SUV that’s quite tempting. Who’d have thought it?

Alfa Romeo Stelvio
Engine: 2.0-litre turbo-petrol, 2.1-litre turbo-diesel four-cylinder (206kW/400Nm); 2.9-litre twin-turbo V6 (375kW/600Nm) | Average fuel: 4.8 litres per 100km | Transmission: Eight-speed automatic | Price: TBA | Australian release: late 2017 | Score: 4 out of 5