2020 Alfa Romeo Giulia

Since the infotainment update in 2020 the technology in this vehicle is really good! But who cares when it's literally the best driving car on the road right now. Fantastic acceleration and handling, neck snapping good looks, I'm really good fuel mileage to boot!

It's been just over 1 month since I purchased my '21 Giulia, so I have no answer for items like long term reliability, so I rated it a 5 since it hasn't broken yet (hah!). Anyway, I will start off with the negative items that I can come up with: Any review you read, or video you watch will always talk about how bad Alfa Romeo's were back in the 1970's and 1980's. So was just about every other brand on the market back then. Today's car is so much different, that you need to IGNORE those parts of the videos and reviews that you consume. The 2021 Giulia is also much better then the 2016 Giulia when it first hit the market, and having several years to work out the bugs that were experienced in early reviews. Now that I've told you about the reliability issues and negative impressions from reviews, let me tell you about the things that I don't like about my Giulia: I have big, size 12 feet, along with long legs, and the front foot space in the car either in the drivers seat or the passenger footwell are not as comfortable for me as I would prefer. Sometimes, my right leg is full on uncomfortable when I have the cruise control set, and have a hard time finding someplace to put my leg for a while. You may never experience this, but I highly recommend you test for this if you are a long legged person with big feet. The base radio sounds great, but it doesn't come with either HD Radio, or a CD player. Now, a whole bunch of you are going to say "Who cares about CD players in 2021?" The answer is my wife and I do. We have hundreds of CD's that we have collected since we are teenagers, and they work perfectly fine, and I don't see any reason to have to abandon something that works perfectly fine. We bought a portable cd player to plug into the aux port in the center console. The one item I dislike the most about the Giulia is the headlights, and this is a completely persona thing. Please, test drive the car and night, and make sure the lights meet your needs for the areas you drive in. My problem with the headlights is that the standard lights are not adaptive, and only 25 Watts. You have to go up a trim level, and then pay extra to get the 35 Watt performance headlight option. The other item I dislike about the headlights is that the headlights flip up a shutter when you activate the high beams, instead of switching to a higher wattage bulb. You have the exact same amount of light in front of you, but now you can see the tree line above you, not actually any further down the road in front of you, which is what you actually want to happen when you turn on the highbeams. If you are trying to blind the sniper on the rooftop at the end of the street, thin these headlights will be perfect for your needs. I wish the back seat entry was bigger. Either the door opening a bit larger, or that the door itself moved more out of the way. That's it for the negative stuff. That's all I have, seriously. The good stuff: This car is just an absolute joy to drive. The steering and handling is fantastic. You can pitch it into corners and feel the car transfer weight, and pitch over onto the sidewalls, dig in, and slice through the corners, chicanes, s-curves, hairpins, decreasing radius off ramps, and whatever else you can throw it into with sublime control. It makes you want to look for the curviest route just to go pick up groceries. I have 2 traffic circles in my neighborhood, and 1 more on the way to the grocery store, and I always take delight in them when there's no traffic in front of me to ruin the fun. The engine is amazingly powerful. The transmission is fantastic. You have 3 power modes to play with that change the personality of the power output and shift logic. Advanced mode decreases maximum torque output to 200 lbs-ft, and decreases the maximum boost that the engine gets fed, along with increasing the AWD functionality if the road conditions are slippery. Normal mode gives you access to 285 lbs-ft of torque, and gives you nice smooth shifts, and lets you play with all the hp the engine makes, whenever you want. Dynamic mode engages the overboost feature, makes more hp, and will produce all 306 lbs-ft of torque, all while snapping through the shifts much, much quicker. It also holds onto gears longer, and lets you fully play with the car, as you start driving like a complete loon. I have run out of words in this review so here's my final advice: Do a brake stand to 2k rpms, and launch it. Thank me afterwards.

Had a BMW and decided to test drive the Alfa. Never got out of it. Has so much more room and power than the BMW. The downside; Took it home, girlfriend drove it and cant get her out of it!