Alfa Romeo Giulietta Diesel: The middle child

Alfa Romeo Giulietta Diesel 138bhp

Alfa Romeo seem to be doing much right – and much less wrong – than ever before. Yet they also seem to be floundering and struggling to make the volume of sales they need to be viable.

Maybe buyers are still expecting Alfas to break before breakfast and disintegrate in to a mass of perforated panels inside the first year. Which they won’t.

What they do now offer is what they always have – something a bit different – but with a dose of reliability and sensible residuals. Alfas stand out. They’re sexy and desirable even if – just like Lamborghini under Audi – they’ve become a bit too mainstream.

Like the Alfa Romeo Giulietta. An evocative name for an Alfa, and a great looking car, brilliantly tied to Uma Thurman in an advert that should have buyers queueing up for the Giulietta.

But modern, sensible Alfa knows that having a drop-dead sexy car advertised by a drop dead sexy woman isn’t quite enough. They need to dial in some sensibleness. Like making sure there’s a car to fit the right economy and performance points in the UK – for fleet and private buyers. Hence we get the 138bhp Alfa Romeo Giulietta; the middle child.

Sporting Alfa’s multijet diesel – the 2.0 litre JTDM-2 – with 138bhp, the new Giulietta fits neatly between the 1.6 litre, 105bhp diesel and the 170bhp version of the 2.0 litre diesel. It offers remarkably good economy and emissions – 119g/km and 62.8mpg – but still hustles to 60mph in 9 seconds.

Other costs are also low, with servicing needed only every 21,000 miles. Which should make the Giulietta a tempting fleet buy, even at £20,750 for the Lusso version. A proper, grown-up Giulietta that still manages to be sexy and should be cheap to run.

Something we doubt applies to Uma.

By Cars UK