2018 Alfa Romeo Stelvio

Tennessee’s Central Basin resembles the Italian Alps about as much as Kevin Bacon looks like actual bacon. But on our drive through the Volunteer State, the Alfa Romeo crossover named for the Continent’s iconic mountain pass transported us instead to a different European motoring mecca. Running southwest out of Nashville, the 444-mile Natchez Trace Parkway plows a narrow squiggle through a verdant forest and conjures up a sort of neo-Nürburgring. The way the manicured easement meets old-growth oak, the way the asphalt never runs straight, the way one blind corner feeds into another, it all evokes the holy Green Hell.

Mind the Lycra-clad cyclists, dispatch with the dawdling sightseers, and ignore the 40-mph speed limit of the Natchez Trace, and the Alfa Romeo Stelvio alights with verve. It steers with a steady linear effort. The brake pedal responds obediently to slight pressure modulation, and in general Alfa’s brake-by-wire system felt more natural and better sorted this time around than it has in Giulia sedans that we’ve driven. The Stelvio doesn’t drive small—it’s slightly longer than the Audi Q5, the BMW X3, and the Mercedes-Benz GLC-class—but there is a precision to the controls that invites you to use more road, to corner closer to trees that crowd the driving line, and to drift nearer the drainage ditch at the pavement’s edge. In this segment, only a Porsche Macan inspires more confidence.

The Stelvio’s dynamic virtues hold up when driven in more routine environs as well. This transmission is the rare automatic that doesn’t race to upshift upon leaving a stoplight, even with the driving-mode selector pointed at the default Natural setting. Beyond the buttercream-smooth Parkway, both the 19- and 20-inch wheels calmly rolled over imperfections.

Expand the Brand

Alfa moved just 2700 vehicles in America in the first five months of 2017. The brand’s keepers hope to grow that number by moving beyond just building sporty vehicles for the enthusiast fringe, expanding into the greener field where the masses of buyers have clustered: compact crossovers. That the Stelvio provides class-competitive rear-seat and cargo space should help it avoid getting bumped from potential customers’ consideration lists, but to keep Alfa’s entry from being a me-too vehicle, the brand is applying technology in its own way.

“At Alfa Romeo, technology is more than a fancy radio and advanced driver-assistance systems. Everybody has that,” taunts Alfa boss Reid Bigland. The technology that Bigland boasts of: Every Stelvio carries a carbon-fiber driveshaft and enough aluminum that the new Alfa should undercut the BMW X3 by almost 100 pounds. The available Performance package installs a helical limited-slip differential between the rear wheels. To drive home the brand message, Alfa makes the driver thumb an engine-start button mounted on the steering wheel. In Sport and Ti Sport trims, massive column-mounted aluminum shift paddles block the control stalks. “You’re not going to use that turn signal without first executing four flawless downshifts,” they insist.

Everybody else also has a turbocharged 2.0-liter inline-four paired with an eight-speed automatic and all-wheel drive, all of which comes standard here. The variable-valve-lift engine is the strongman of the class, however, at 280 horses and 306 lb-ft of torque. Yet it’s also a gentleman, revving smoothly with minimal turbo lag.

Stelvio pricing starts from $42,990 for a nicely equipped car that includes 10-way power seats for both the driver and passenger, real leather (many competitors use a synthetic material as standard), 18-inch wheels, proximity-key entry, remote start, adaptive headlights, rear parking sensors, a backup camera, and a power liftgate. The $2000 step up to the Ti trim adds heating to the front seats and the steering wheel, satellite radio, front parking sensors, and an 8.8-inch infotainment display (up from 6.5 inches in the base model). Sport variants, available in both base and Ti configurations, include paddle shifters, aluminum interior trim and pedals, larger wheels, painted brake calipers (in red, black, or yellow), and gloss-black exterior trim. A couple of different driver-assistance packages bring blind-spot monitoring, auto-dimming exterior mirrors, adaptive cruise control, forward-collision warning with automated emergency braking, lane-departure warning, and automatic high-beams. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility will become standard equipment within a couple months of the Stelvio’s late-June arrival, but that feature is unavailable in the initial batch of cars.

While Maserati’s remake has been assembled partially with Chrysler leftovers, Alfa gets its own premium-feeling switchgear and a new infotainment system that is, at least for now, exclusive to the brand. The clean interior design can be accented with real aluminum, wood, or carbon fiber. At the same time, the designers didn’t attempt to dress up some of the plastics, such as the untextured, flat-finish trim that surrounds the unfortunate, ambiguous electronic shifter. (Are we in neutral? Drive? Reverse? Only the class-action lawyers know for sure!) And the coarse-grain dashtop might have been pilfered from the Ford Taurus assembly plant. In the Stelvio, the highs are high and the lows are low.

The Italian Question

You could extend that encapsulation to cover the entire Alfa Romeo brand. In our four separate tests, not a single fleet-footed Giulia has escaped our scrutiny without first lighting a check-engine lamp, entering a limp-home mode, or jamming its sunroof in the open position. And while we never needed to unpack the code reader we carried to Nashville, the Stelvio illuminated a fault light for the auto stop-start system less than two miles from the end of the drive.

They can take Alfa Romeo out of Italy. But they haven’t taken Italy out of Alfa Romeo.

Specifications >

VEHICLE TYPE: front-engine, all-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 4-door hatchback

BASE PRICES: Stelvio, $42,990;
Sport, $44,790;
Ti, $44,990;
Ti Sport, $47,490;
Ti Lusso, $47,490

ENGINE TYPE: turbocharged and intercooled SOHC 16-valve inline-4, aluminum block and head, direct fuel injection

Displacement: 122 cu in, 1993 cc
Power: 280 hp @ 5200 rpm
Torque: 306 lb-ft @ 2000 rpm

TRANSMISSION: 8-speed automatic with manual shifting mode

DIMENSIONS:
Wheelbase: 110.9 in
Length: 184.6 in
Width: 74.9 in Height: 66.0 in
Passenger volume: 89 cu ft
Cargo volume: 19 cu ft
Curb weight (C/D est): 4100 lb

PERFORMANCE (C/D EST):
Zero to 60 mph: 5.5 sec
Zero to 100 mph: 14.7 sec
Standing ¼-mile: 14.2 sec
Top speed: 144 mph

FUEL ECONOMY:
EPA combined/city/highway: 24/22/28 mpg