Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio review

The indoor furniture's style matches the outer sheetmetal. It's all flowing curves, not the severe straight lines of the BMW and Audi rivals. Just a shame it now gets rather grim textured carbon trim inside, which doesn't look anything like as expensive as the glossy stuff you used to get.

Front seats are now electric as standard (£3.25k carbon sports seats are optional), setting a spot-on driving position for most of us. You sit low, with legs straight out ahead of you. If Alfa gets it so right here why is the Stelvio's driving position so poor? Cabin storage is on par, and the 480-litre boot's OK.

Does it feel dated?

Really depends on where you’ve come from. For example, compared to a modern M3 or C63, in a word: yes. It just doesn’t quite have the same ‘premium’ feel. Where the M3 oozes class, the C63 is an absolute tech fest, the Giulia can’t help but feel a little dated, a little lacking compared to its more expensive rivals.

But there’s a lot to be said for the Alfa’s simplicity, with its physical steering wheel controls laughing in the face of the poor touch sensitive wheel spokes you find in the Merc, the proper climate controls instead of screen-based uselessness, and other useful tools such as a one-button job to switch off the lane keep assist.

What about the screens themselves?

Directly in front of you the old analogue dials are gone, in their place a 12.3in digital instrument cluster with four different readouts. It still sits in deep cylindrical shrouds however, recalling 1960s Alfa Spiders.

The touchscreen can now be set up to show one big display (nav, phone, music or performance graphs/gauges) or a few smaller windows of your choosing. Or you can just mirror your phone. Which if you’re anything like us you’ll immediately do. The touchscreen is an arm's reach away, but mostly we actually used the rotary controller instead. See, more sensible ergonomics.

That controller has a more precise and clicky feel than before. It's one of several detail quality improvements. So overall, not a match for the Germans, but not a deal-breaking distance behind either.