The Alfa Romeo Guilia Veloce: The Cursed Monkey's Paw

I am going to open this review with an apology to my mother. The last time I drove this car a curb jumped out of nowhere and lightly damaged one of the alloys, and when she finally trusts me to drive it again, I take her beloved Guilia up to the Peak District and write a review that she is going to be rather annoyed at. Just remember mum, I both love you and also likely have the most say in where we put you when you get old. Now we have that out of the way, the Alfa Romeo Guila Veloce:

It's a muggy Saturday morning and I'm set to head out for the first Twinspark Car Club Cruise, and as my daily Alfa 156 Sportwagon had just been discovered to have an underside rustier than that of the Titanic, my mother offers me the keys to the Guilia for the drive. Despite my badgering being one of the reasons my mother even noticed the Guilia in the first place, I have had the least experience in the Guilia of anyone in my family, so I am eager to try it out. This particular Guilia is a 2019 Veloce, it's got a 2.0 4 pot turbo sending 280 ish horsepower and 400nm of torque to the rear wheels via an 8 speed automatic gearbox and it's done something around 25,000 miles. Interestingly, compared to many of its competitors, it hasn't grown an absurd amount compared to my 156, its senior by nearly 20 years, so on paper, this car is about everything I could hope for. A saloon that is usably small so you can use more of the road, decent power, and much to my approval given it addresses my major complaint on the 156, it's rear wheel drive, which means it should be a ton of fun on the mountainside passes of the Peaks.

Straight off the bat, there is a lot about this car I really like. For a modern car that complies with modern safety regulations, something that has forced higher noses, fatter bumpers and a lot more crumple zone, I think they've done a really good job making an attractive looking car. In my opinion, it is easily one of, if not the best looking car in its class. It's mostly comfortable too, I'll expand on this later but the seats seem to offer a good amount of support without being so tight that you need to explain to your date that the reason they can't breathe easily is because you need to get good lap times in your family saloon, and I love the interior. I'm aware we are supposed to look down on infotainment screens that you control via a toggle instead of touch, but frankly, I hate car touch screens. They always end up covered in fingerprints and you have to lean over to use them, the Alfa has a toggle that is placed perfectly to where your arm falls, it is a much more natural design in my eyes. It's also fairly good on fuel, offical stats being around 38 to the gallon. So already being in my good books, I set off for the Peaks, and that's where the problems started.

This is a 4 cylinder turbo, by design the car only needs one exhaust pipe, yet at the back, in the name of looking sporty, Alfa has given the Guilia 2 fat pipes, proudly sitting at the back of the bumper, they're not fake either, unlike a lot of its German competitors. So why, if you go to the effort of giving it extra pipes it doesnt need, and making a car that looks all the part of a super saloon, would you make it sound so quiet? The engine itself when you actually get to the upper limits and you can just about vaguely hear, does actually have a good little note to it, but it almost feels like they're ashamed of the noise. As stated before, I drive it's predecessor, a 156 Veloce, and while mine does have a set of pipes louder than God's revolver (and twice as shiny), they are not quiet stock, Alfa was proud of that engine, and they wanted you to know about it. They should be proud of this one too, and yet, silence. Lack of noise aside, the engine is fairly punchy, you're certainly never wanting for power, you do sometimes find that a mix of gearbox lag and very minor turbo lag do leave you a little in the lurch but generally it's pretty good. The gearbox also only really had difficulties where we came to extremely tight and extremely steep corners on our route, and this was rectified with the paddle shifters. Would I prefer a manual here? absolutely, does the auto suck to the point it's a detriment to the car? not really. What absolutely is of detriment to this car however is the tyres. It has runflats, and dear God do they make the ride unbearably harsh. I beg of my parents: please, when the tread is low, stick some Pilot Sports on, at the very least a set of Primacy 4s, just something that doesn't make the car feel like they've wrapped the wheels in cement, covered them in rubber and called it a day. These tyres are awful, and they're manufacturer spec too. They don't grip amazingly well either, having lost traction once or twice at low speeds without much power. The tyres are one of the things I'll use to excuse it, the other being the drive mode I had to drive the car in.

Alfa has a D.N.A. drive selection system. D stands for Dynamic, this sharpens the brakes, stiffens the suspension and supposedly increases throttle response, perfect for the track. N stands for Natural, this is for just your every day driving, and then there's A, which Alfa seemed to have forgotten to figure out a name for, as everywhere I look states something different, but it softens the car up a bit and makes it a bit more eco friendly. I had passengers with me that day, and with D just being far too stiff to use on the abysmal road surfaces of England without developing hemorrhoids, I had it in A for their comfort. I would like to hope this is why the steering felt so entirely dead on the Guilia. I'd turn it in on a gentle bend and the total lack of any feedback meant I had no idea what the tyres were doing and felt like I was about to understeer my way to an untimely death. I would certainly hope D makes this better but I was not left feeling confident in the car on the road. The weird thing about all that is it is really capable, I know in the right hands these cars can be absurdly quick, they have built a really good chassis here, it just doesn't seem to give you the feedback to utilise it properly in the A mode. I found it hard to keep up with the other cars in front for most of the day.

But beyond all this, the biggest sin of all for an Alfa, it doesn't have a strong sense of character. There is definitely some Alfa quirkiness under the skin, the ergonomics of the rear seats are laughable, there's a fairly unique style to it and it's got the unreliability issues Alfa is famed for, but this feels almost too sensible. It feels like someone told Alfa to cut their hair and get a job. My 156 is slower than this by a long shot, but it's so full of character, it's incredibly distinct. Nothing of its age looks like it, the interior is weirdly done, it displays its beating V6 heart to you like a trophy, it's unashamed of what it is. The Guilia is ashamed. It feels ashamed to be an Alfa, it feels a little too sensible, it feels like it's trying to be German, and the Germans make plenty of good cars, but I come back to Alfa time and again for the character, the charm, the soul, yet with this, it feels like I was holding the cursed monkey's paw when I was wishing for my 156 to come with rear drive and more power, and what they've done is taken an Alfa badge and stuck it on a 3 Series. Can I judge them for doing this? No, of course not, it's the sort of move that actually gets Alfas to sell, they are a business after all, and it says a lot that my mother loves this car when usually she hates Alfa Romeos, it is the way to bring new people to the brand at a time when the German cars are dominating. It just makes me sad that the way they've done it is by playing the same game, not doing their own, weird thing. It isn't a bad car by any stretch, but it is far from being the right car for me.