Stelvio

Automobile.ro
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Alfa Romeo Stelvio, private owner review

Hi, this is my Alfa Stelvio page. It describes my experience owning an Alfa Romeo Stelvio for more than 1 year, and it's meant to help anybody out there pondering if they should get one. I'll talk about Giulia too, wanted a Giulia actually and done extensive test driving but could not find one at the time with the proper "toys", so i got a fully optioned Stelvio instead.

Prior to buying i also searched the internet long and wide and got somehow spooked by the multitude of horror stories, yes, probably you always hear the bad experiences but seldom the good ones. Also maybe this generation of Alfas had their childhood teething problems but on my car (built in 2019) they seem to have been sorted out.

I won't bother building this into a proper website, i'll just put the info and let google do it's magic. My intended audience (people curios to know how those Alfas behave in long term ownership) will find their answers here, and thanks to google, they will get here.

You will find bellow the whole story, but let's start with the bottom line for those of you in a hurry: the car is a joy to drive and use and i have had 0 issues of any kind in 15 months and 31.000 km. Handling, comfort, stability, cornering, power and engine sound, driving position, are all exceptional for the price. Fuel consumption is better than i expected and btw, this car is the only one i ever had which shows a higher consumption on the dash computer than you measure at the pump. Wierd but a nice surprise. Negatives, just one, the front pillars bordering the windscreen plus external mirrors are large and impede visibility significantly. Aside from that, no true negatives, the usual bickering you hear or see on the internet regarding quality of rear camera or infotaiment resolution or whatever, are just splitting hairs. That's a wonderfully driving car with a bad but usable rear camera and an unobtrusive and great to use infotaiment. That.

Before getting to details. I'll make this in instalments, i'll write some then post, then write some more and post again so this will get updated. I' ll just put the date of posting before each text so you can pick up where you left last time. I will still keep this first part always at the top for newcomers to see first. Enjoy!

Febr 3rd 2022
The car is a 2019 2.0 l 280 HP gasoline engine, in the Super version but with all the optional toys available on Stelvio in 2019. I will list here only the more "exotic" ones like panoramic sunroof, leather on the bord and door panels, adaptive cruise control going to 0 km/hour, limited slip diff, active suspension, sport seats. This also happen to be what i consider a must have on Stelvio (except maybe the panoramic sunroof, that's just nice but you can do without it). On Giulia is different, you can also live without the active suspension. Not so on Stelvio, given the weight and height of the car it bends significantly in the corners without the active suspension (do not confuse with adaptive dampers, that's something many Alfas have, i think, but active suspension is something else and better. Check "Alfa SDC (Synaptic Dynamic Control)" for details). Maybe i'll write an extensive explanation on it later). Actually the first Stelvio i drove was without active suspension (and without the sport seats, it was a "lusso" model) and the corner bending and lack of chair support made me rule out Stelvio at the time. Later on i drove one identical with the one i later bought (with active suspension and sport seats) and everything was much better. You can actually feel the suspension tightening when entering a tight corner, i first tested that in a roundabout. No match for the Giulia in terms of raw road handling but still as fun to drive.

How about the padels? Well, i am mixed about that, they are great and being fixed on the steering column they are always where you expect them to be. So, while absolutely great, i like as much changing gears pushing the gear lever up and down. So this will come down to personal preference and budget, altough Alfa i think packages padels with the active suspension so you probably can't get one without the other. Plus the gearbox is very good so you don't really need to change manually except for fun. And also when doing tight overtaking on busy one lane roads, the fraction of a second you gain by keeping engine revving properly in manual rather than relaying on kick down, matters.

Aug 16th 2022
Got to 42000 km and 22 months of usage. The car still works great, no issues so far.
For those curious on fuel consumption, I will cover that here in detail. First, you probably know this car only shows consumption up to 15 l/100 km due to some design choices they made, so whenever it is higher it only shows 15. For me this was not a problem as most weekends i do some 200 km outside city and fuel indicator always drops bellow 15. Actually most tank refills happen when my fuel consumption indicator shows anywhere between 11 to 13.5 l/100 km and the actual math done at the pump usually shows 0.2-0.4 l/100km less consumption than that.
Still i was curious to find out how much this car actually consumes around city in heavy traffic, when fuel indicator never goes bellow 15. So, i did a test at the pump. I filled the tank on Sunday evening, then used the car for going to work and back during the week (peak traffic only), then filled the tank again on Saturday morning. Board indicator was showing 15 l/100km (of course), and doing the math on fuel added to refill tank has resulted in 15.5 l/100km. So, this is what you can expect in city with heavy traffic. Outside city (but no highway), most times i get around 8-10 l/100km, depending on how much fun i have with car. More fun, higher consumption, as you would expect. In one instance (200 km round trip outside city) when i was actually driving calmly and fully within speed limits, I got 6.7 l/100km (!). So, the car "drinks" as much or as little as you want, esentially.
Finally, I did 2 holiday trips around Europe (80% highways), some 4000 km each, last year, and this year. Got 10.5 l/100km for the whole trip last year, and 9.5 l/100 km this year. Apparently the car has started to consume a bit less after some 25000 km.
One more thing: meantime i found out a way around that board indicator limitation at 15 l/100 km. You can change settings to show you fuel consumption not in l/100km but km/l. This way you get the actual consumption in the city too, with no need for special tests.
Enough for now, see you later.