Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio engines & performance

There’s a reason that the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio’s interior foibles seem as petty as they are, and it’s to do with the way the car drives. The V6 fires to a purposeful, if not spiteful, idle, with the impression that air is being moved around in gruff amounts.

It's no AMG V8, but neither is AMG’s latest offering. So notch up another win for this old stager.

The handbook warns you to expect ‘instability’ when selecting Race mode, but it’s actually referring to the action of the selector and not to the car’s handling

Matt Saunders

Road test editor

If you twist the DNA drive mode selector to D (for dynamic), it increases the exhaust woofle, sharpens the throttle response and affects which gear the transmission opts to put itself in.

On part throttle, mind, there’s an occasional hesitancy: sometimes it gives you more than you ask, sometimes less, but it’s very slight and only just enough to prick your consciousness.

The eight-speed auto’s movements are nicely matched, although at anything more than a gentle cruise we found we wanted to take charge ourselves via the column-mounted shift paddles.

Do so and the Alfa fairly flies. In our 2017 road test, in good perfect conditions and on new tyres it hit 60mph from rest in under four seconds. As a two-way average, with two people aboard and fully fuelled, there’s still nothing wrong with the 4.5sec the car returned in our hands. It’s unlikely the extra 10bhp added at the start of 2024 will make much difference.