Time for another bang of Shed’s celebratory dinner gong this week as he welcomes another SOTW debutant, Alfa Romeo’s Giulietta. Not only that, it’s a dirt cheap one too.
As you will recall, Alfa’s replacement for the 147 family hatch arrived on the scene in 2010. After narrowly managing to avoid the death curse that is the European Car of the Year award, the Giulietta went on to tot up nearly 470,000 sales over the following decade. It was replaced in 2022 by the Q3-sized Tonale crossover, Alfa’s first all-new car under the Stellantis regime. Hands up any one who has ever seen one of them on UK roads? Shed hasn’t. Mind you, he hasn’t seen much of anything recently, what with the thick coating of muck now caked on his specs.
This Giulietta is powered by a JTDM-2 2.0 diesel which in 2011, the year our car was registered, could be had in a choice of outputs: 167hp, which was good for 133mph and a 0-60mph time in the low eights, or 138hp, giving you 127mph and a 0-60mph time in the high eights. The ad is claiming 170hp but Shed is almost sure that you could only get that engine spec with an auto gearbox and this one is a manual so it’s over to you on that. What Shed does know is that if you’re looking for mouse-like economy with a nice badge, either variant is capable of notching up more than 60 miles on a gallon of the black stuff. Better still, the road tax on the 138hp drops from an already not too bad £190 for the 167hp car to a more than acceptable £35.
Alfa’s DNA system gave you three driving modes: Dynamic, which sharpened throttle and steering responses; the slightly ambiguous All-weather, which blunted them; and Normal which was, well, normal, whatever Alfa’s definition of that might have been. Although handling on the Giulietta’s Stilo/Bravo platform’s firm suspension was very decent, it wasn’t quite up there dynamically with class rivals like the Focus. The Alfa’s cabin environment was nothing special either, and not creak-free. This one is Veloce spec so you do get a reasonable wedge of kit including part-leather sports seats, two-zone climate control, cruise and air con. After nearly 100,000 miles the leathery bits appear to be holding up well and the body, unlike that of Mrs Shed, appears to be blemish-free.
The last MOT was done in April and uncovered nothing more sinister than gummy headlamp lenses, a deteriorated front ARB dust cover, worn brake pads and some non-excessive movement in one front suspension arm bushing. Alfa suspension has famously been made from a solidified mix of mashed-up pasta shapes and panacotta for many years now so we shouldn’t be too surprised at the last one. The clutch was renewed 13,000 miles ago.
Mrs Shed has never had a facelift because the equipment required to carry out that kind of work hasn’t been built yet, but the Giulietta had two facelifts, in 2013 and 2016. Shed prefers the more sculpted look of this gen-one car which back in the day was priced at getting on for £23,000. Today it’s yours for just twelve ninety five. Surely there must be a catch.
Well, yes, there is, and it’s a fourth driving mode called Engine Management Light On. In Shed’s experience, many electrical faults are not real faults at all. They’re often just wonky sensors telling lies. The car initially failed its April MOT on that EML fault. Obviously they managed to clear it in time for the retest – the YouTube videos on how to do that take under a minute to watch – but by the looks of it, it’s come back. If you know someone in the trade with a code reader and the correct sonic screwdriver, or you have your own, or like Shed you’re happy to put some gaffer tape over the dash light, this could turn out to be a canny purchase.
Comparable Giuilettas of this sort of year and mileage are usually at least £2,000 and Shed has seen plenty priced at over £3,000, with no guarantee that any of them will have Greatest Hits on the stereo like our one. Shed made the mistake of mentioning great hits in an otherwise innocent conversation about the postmistress’s performance in the popular music section of the village quiz. Mrs Shed naturally misheard that, resulting in the usual cranial enlarging results for Shed.
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