**Test Drive: Alfa Romeo Stelvio**

As I stepped into the car, I was immediately struck by its supercar-like qualities. The cabin, while not particularly flashy, is perfectly suited for those looking for a comfortable and practical executive four-door saloon. The MMI and sat-nav system is intuitive and easy to use, with a simple and logical layout that makes navigation a breeze.

One of the first things I noticed was the instrument binnacle. The large digital speedo dominates the center of the dashboard, flanked by a smaller odometer on the left and a rev counter on the right. It's a clear and easy-to-read display that provides all the necessary information for driving. The steering wheel itself is also worth noting, with a clever start/stop button that adds to its premium feel.

I took the Stelvio out for a spin, enjoying the smooth and responsive drive. The car is incredibly confident on the open road, giving me the freedom to push it hard without worrying about stability or traction. When I turned up the speed, the acceleration was impressive, with the engine delivering plenty of power. However, I also appreciated the gentle pull of the diesel engine when cruising at lower speeds.

As part of my test drive, I decided to do a slightly unconventional test by driving from sixty miles per hour down to zero. With the car's collision awareness system engaged, I could see the emergency lights flashing and hear the warning tones as I slowly brought the speed down. It was impressive to see how quickly the car came to a stop, demonstrating its advanced safety features.

However, there is one aspect of the Stelvio that requires some getting used to – the gearstick or gear lever. While it's not particularly complicated, I found myself struggling to engage the correct gear at times. Specifically, I had a couple of instances where I couldn't get the car to transition from neutral to drive or from reverse to neutral without having to manually disengage the electric handbrake.

Despite this minor quibble, my overall impression of the Stelvio is overwhelmingly positive. The Quadrifoglio model, which I've had experience with before, is certainly its sibling's match in terms of performance and driving dynamics. However, it's also worth noting that the diesel engine version I tested was a revelation – delivering plenty of power when needed while still being economical.

When it comes to design, the Stelvio is a bit of an oddball in the executive saloon market. It has a unique and sporty look, especially with the Quadrifoglio model's distinctive styling cues. The rear end, in particular, looks particularly sharp with its twin exhausts giving away the engine's performance capabilities.

In terms of comfort, the Stelvio is also a strong contender. I spent some time driving on the highway, and the car proved to be incredibly comfortable – even with a fully loaded boot full of passengers and luggage. The ride was smooth and firm, making it an excellent choice for long-distance travel.

Finally, I want to extend my gratitude to Alfa Romeo UK for giving me access to the Stelvio, as well as the Craig TV car collective for organizing the test drive event. It was a pleasure driving such an impressive machine, and I'm confident that this car will appeal to those looking for something unique in the executive saloon market.

**Conclusion**

Overall, my experience with the Alfa Romeo Stelvio has been overwhelmingly positive. With its comfortable cabin, intuitive infotainment system, and responsive drive, it's a car that truly delivers on its promises. While there may be some minor quirks to get used to, they're far outweighed by the many strengths of this impressive executive saloon. If you're in the market for something a bit different from the usual suspects – like BMWs or Mercedes C-class – then I highly recommend giving the Stelvio a try.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys and welcome to petrol ped so you join me at a place called Foxton locks near Leicester sheer for a really really cool day I think now you may well have seen my Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio review that I did recently if not I will put a card above so behind me is the Alfa Romeo Giulia speciali now I'm really interested to drive this car so the Giulia is the range-topping m3 eating all our petrol monster this I think is the car that will go up against the bulk of the BMW 3-series and Mercedes c-class fleet this is a 2.2 diesel so it's got that lovely mix of great performance but also economy and I'm going to be really interested to see just what if you like I might even call it the every man's Giulia the one that the majority of people are going to kind of look at see just how good this car is there are some amazing roads around me today so we're going to take it out get it on some nice roads put it through its paces and just see how it compares with those German rivals this handsome-looking Julius Pesci Olli is finished in Vesuvio gray and sits on 18-inch 10-spoke turbine alloys it's 2.2 litre diesel engine produces 180 bhp and 450 Newton meters of torque 0 to 60 is only 7.1 seconds but the combined cycle is an impressive 60 7.3 miles per gallon the smart black leather sports interior gives the cabin and clean and practical feel the on the road price is 35,000 pounds with this example costing thirty six thousand four hundred pounds now if you saw my Quadrifoglio review and there was a couple of things about that the first thing it was filmed in the new forest so I was pretty restricted in terms of the kind of roads I had access to and I got a good feel for the car but I didn't really have the chance to stretch his legs the great thing about where I am today is they're hot some amazing roads are really there's a an absolutely brilliant selection of roads around here so hopefully and we can kind of have a bit of a play with this car I've got some very familiar controls I've got there the DNA switch down here and at the moment I've got it set in normal I'm in just normal automatic mode and and the response of the car is really really nice now the interesting thing is there's lots of familiarity in here from the junior there's their lovely big gear changes which you watch that review you'll know how much I fell in love with those and there's more normal materials in here there's less carbon fiber for obvi obviously but it's still a nice place to be now with this road being so lovely I have to basically put the car into the manual gearbox so I'm just going to switch the selector to the left I'm now in manual gearbox and we will see just how whether or not this gearbox is 8-speed gearbox is just as nice as it is in the julia in the Quadrifoglio Rada it's a very smooth gear change this is a 2.2 diesel engine it's it's only got only got 180 horsepower so it's it's clearly lacking on their kind of performance states compared with the Quadrifoglio and it's not a fair comparison for me to compete comparing into that car but it's difficult when that that's a car I've driven gear change is pretty Swift and smooth and the Paulo way out of the corners is he's good it feels nice it feels kind of responsive I think the way I would describe the engine is it doesn't have a kind of surgery just it just accelerates away it's not the most dynamic feeling engine in the world in terms of accelerative sort of push but it gets the job done and we're rocking along here at a you know reasonably nice rated knots the car certainly has a nice feeling on the road which I finds really really important now from the tech in here actually is very very usable the bore I would say is the cabin just here's a little bit more plane and utilitarian than it did in the Quadrifoglio because that had the materials to kind of bring it to life a little bit I really like the steering wheel and I just feel that the dash is lacking a little bit of the sort of drama that I would expect from an Alfa but the seats are very very comfortable and it's a nice place to be I can imagine you can truck along here and do some good miles in this car and and certainly from a rear passenger space there seems to be plenty about - so in normal driving mode then it's pretty responsive he certainly gets the job done let's make the switch to dynamic I've got a lovely change of dashboard and okay this car just has just come alive basically it's a completely different feel once you sticking into that dynamic mode it has far more urgency and actually a really nice feeling to it so I think your your kind of normal mode everyday driving mooching around town you want a little bit of fun stick it into the dynamic mode and actually it really does get the job done our gearbox is very very good hopefully poise and balance through the corners and actually a pretty good pull out from the corners as well so I've been driving this car for a while now and what I really really like about it is the driving feel so it doesn't matter I mean for me if I was if I had this car and it was mine I Drive it Indy all the time it's just got that kind of responsiveness that I want from a car but it doesn't matter whether you're driving it on the paddles or whether you're driving in the auto box he has a really really nice responsive feel to it the steering weight is very very good and what I like about this road is there's lots of dirt a nice mix of different types of corners from long open corners to short tight ones and it handles them really really well front end grip is very good yeah I'm on the public road I can't push it too hard but you know that balance going into a corner is really really nice that brakes are very responsive they've got a lovely feel to them so all in all from a kind of driver's car point of view this car really really is ticking the boxes for me and you know the the rear wheel drive balance it's a lovely dry day today but you know it feels very very planted and very sure-footed and I like that a lot so I can see that you know there'll be lots and lots of people and one of the things I got from the when I did the Quadrifoglio review was loads of BMW and Mercedes fans kind of saying alright so now for it's never gonna be as good as a BMW or a Mercedes now you may well make that an argument for the top level Quadrifoglio versus m3 or c63 I have to say though you get into this car and it's it's got an awful lot of things an awful lot of attributes that people often associate with BMW it feels really really super and you know if you are in that kind of executive four-door saloon market and you haven't considered one of these then I think you probably should yes there are a few things in here I think the cabins a little bit plain a little bit ordinary for me I'd like a little bit more Wow but I'm being really really picky the MMI and the sat-nav is very intuitive it seems really simple to use I've had a bit of a play with that the main central display and instrument binnacle again is it is it does the job I've got a nice big rev counter on the left I've got a nice big odometer on the right and a big digital speedo in the middle it's doing the job the steering wheel itself is nice touches like having the start/stop button on the steering wheel a nice yeah all at all I'm really really liking his car to be fair and when you get a nice bit of open road like this and you kind of want to just push on a little bit it gives you that confidence and that drivers feel I like it a lot I'm gonna do a slightly different test I normally do nought to sixty tests but in this car I'm gonna do a sixty to naught because it's got collision awareness so when you start breaking card all the emergency lights come on so I'm at sixty miles an hour now and go there we go it's pretty impressive I might need to start doing more of those so you hang the anchors on and this thing stopped really quickly but the emergency flashers start coming on to kind of let people know behind that you're braking really hard mine the little thing about the gearstick or gear leaver however you want to call it is I don't know whether it's me just being a bit rubbish but you have to pull the little lever back on the the back of the gear stick to engage drive with your foot on the brake and the same thing for reverse but there's been a couple of times when I've struggled to get it to go from neutral to reverse or neutral to drive and then the electric handbrake dunno whether it's meant to disengage automatically or not but a couple of times I've want to drive off and it's not disengaged automatically and I've had to do it manually now that might just be me being cack-handed but but that sister it's been a frustrating a couple of times so one of my final impressions of this car well I'm hugely impressed with it if I'm honest I drove the Quadrifoglio and loved that but then I was expecting to love that it's right up my street it's my kind of car is got lots of power lots of performance it sounds amazing so stepping into this with it being diesel I kind of thought it might be a bit disappointing but it really hasn't been it's got when you put it in the dynamic setting on the DNA the DNA switch it has a lovely lovely sporty response the feeling of the steering the the balance through the corners is very very impressive and mapped to this 8-speed gearbox whether you're driving in Auto or whether you grab a paddle it really is a very responsive Drive and it kind of gives you that smile on your face that you maybe don't expect when you're looking at buying a saloon car so if you are out there and you're looking at a four-door saloon you really need to put one of these in in the mix to be honest especially if you're looking at the normal sort of BMW 3-series and Mercedes c-class and and so on you know I like the fact that this is a bit different it's an alpha it's got pink I think it looks great from the outside this special early version I think looks really nice from the back nice sort of twin exhausts inside it's a very comfortable place to be I've been driving the car for quite a while now as I said before it's maybe not got the drama I would want from an Alfa but it's very functional and easy to use which I guess is the whole point so I have a couple of thank-yous I need to say thank you to Alfa Romeo UK for access to the car and the car was organised by the the Craig TV car collective so a huge thank you to those guys for organising the event today and inviting me and giving me access to such a great car but I hope you've enjoyed the video if you have done so give me a thumbs up comment are always welcome and if you haven't done so already please subscribe to petrol bed for plenty more content to come and I will see you on the next film guys you take care drive safehey guys and welcome to petrol ped so you join me at a place called Foxton locks near Leicester sheer for a really really cool day I think now you may well have seen my Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio review that I did recently if not I will put a card above so behind me is the Alfa Romeo Giulia speciali now I'm really interested to drive this car so the Giulia is the range-topping m3 eating all our petrol monster this I think is the car that will go up against the bulk of the BMW 3-series and Mercedes c-class fleet this is a 2.2 diesel so it's got that lovely mix of great performance but also economy and I'm going to be really interested to see just what if you like I might even call it the every man's Giulia the one that the majority of people are going to kind of look at see just how good this car is there are some amazing roads around me today so we're going to take it out get it on some nice roads put it through its paces and just see how it compares with those German rivals this handsome-looking Julius Pesci Olli is finished in Vesuvio gray and sits on 18-inch 10-spoke turbine alloys it's 2.2 litre diesel engine produces 180 bhp and 450 Newton meters of torque 0 to 60 is only 7.1 seconds but the combined cycle is an impressive 60 7.3 miles per gallon the smart black leather sports interior gives the cabin and clean and practical feel the on the road price is 35,000 pounds with this example costing thirty six thousand four hundred pounds now if you saw my Quadrifoglio review and there was a couple of things about that the first thing it was filmed in the new forest so I was pretty restricted in terms of the kind of roads I had access to and I got a good feel for the car but I didn't really have the chance to stretch his legs the great thing about where I am today is they're hot some amazing roads are really there's a an absolutely brilliant selection of roads around here so hopefully and we can kind of have a bit of a play with this car I've got some very familiar controls I've got there the DNA switch down here and at the moment I've got it set in normal I'm in just normal automatic mode and and the response of the car is really really nice now the interesting thing is there's lots of familiarity in here from the junior there's their lovely big gear changes which you watch that review you'll know how much I fell in love with those and there's more normal materials in here there's less carbon fiber for obvi obviously but it's still a nice place to be now with this road being so lovely I have to basically put the car into the manual gearbox so I'm just going to switch the selector to the left I'm now in manual gearbox and we will see just how whether or not this gearbox is 8-speed gearbox is just as nice as it is in the julia in the Quadrifoglio Rada it's a very smooth gear change this is a 2.2 diesel engine it's it's only got only got 180 horsepower so it's it's clearly lacking on their kind of performance states compared with the Quadrifoglio and it's not a fair comparison for me to compete comparing into that car but it's difficult when that that's a car I've driven gear change is pretty Swift and smooth and the Paulo way out of the corners is he's good it feels nice it feels kind of responsive I think the way I would describe the engine is it doesn't have a kind of surgery just it just accelerates away it's not the most dynamic feeling engine in the world in terms of accelerative sort of push but it gets the job done and we're rocking along here at a you know reasonably nice rated knots the car certainly has a nice feeling on the road which I finds really really important now from the tech in here actually is very very usable the bore I would say is the cabin just here's a little bit more plane and utilitarian than it did in the Quadrifoglio because that had the materials to kind of bring it to life a little bit I really like the steering wheel and I just feel that the dash is lacking a little bit of the sort of drama that I would expect from an Alfa but the seats are very very comfortable and it's a nice place to be I can imagine you can truck along here and do some good miles in this car and and certainly from a rear passenger space there seems to be plenty about - so in normal driving mode then it's pretty responsive he certainly gets the job done let's make the switch to dynamic I've got a lovely change of dashboard and okay this car just has just come alive basically it's a completely different feel once you sticking into that dynamic mode it has far more urgency and actually a really nice feeling to it so I think your your kind of normal mode everyday driving mooching around town you want a little bit of fun stick it into the dynamic mode and actually it really does get the job done our gearbox is very very good hopefully poise and balance through the corners and actually a pretty good pull out from the corners as well so I've been driving this car for a while now and what I really really like about it is the driving feel so it doesn't matter I mean for me if I was if I had this car and it was mine I Drive it Indy all the time it's just got that kind of responsiveness that I want from a car but it doesn't matter whether you're driving it on the paddles or whether you're driving in the auto box he has a really really nice responsive feel to it the steering weight is very very good and what I like about this road is there's lots of dirt a nice mix of different types of corners from long open corners to short tight ones and it handles them really really well front end grip is very good yeah I'm on the public road I can't push it too hard but you know that balance going into a corner is really really nice that brakes are very responsive they've got a lovely feel to them so all in all from a kind of driver's car point of view this car really really is ticking the boxes for me and you know the the rear wheel drive balance it's a lovely dry day today but you know it feels very very planted and very sure-footed and I like that a lot so I can see that you know there'll be lots and lots of people and one of the things I got from the when I did the Quadrifoglio review was loads of BMW and Mercedes fans kind of saying alright so now for it's never gonna be as good as a BMW or a Mercedes now you may well make that an argument for the top level Quadrifoglio versus m3 or c63 I have to say though you get into this car and it's it's got an awful lot of things an awful lot of attributes that people often associate with BMW it feels really really super and you know if you are in that kind of executive four-door saloon market and you haven't considered one of these then I think you probably should yes there are a few things in here I think the cabins a little bit plain a little bit ordinary for me I'd like a little bit more Wow but I'm being really really picky the MMI and the sat-nav is very intuitive it seems really simple to use I've had a bit of a play with that the main central display and instrument binnacle again is it is it does the job I've got a nice big rev counter on the left I've got a nice big odometer on the right and a big digital speedo in the middle it's doing the job the steering wheel itself is nice touches like having the start/stop button on the steering wheel a nice yeah all at all I'm really really liking his car to be fair and when you get a nice bit of open road like this and you kind of want to just push on a little bit it gives you that confidence and that drivers feel I like it a lot I'm gonna do a slightly different test I normally do nought to sixty tests but in this car I'm gonna do a sixty to naught because it's got collision awareness so when you start breaking card all the emergency lights come on so I'm at sixty miles an hour now and go there we go it's pretty impressive I might need to start doing more of those so you hang the anchors on and this thing stopped really quickly but the emergency flashers start coming on to kind of let people know behind that you're braking really hard mine the little thing about the gearstick or gear leaver however you want to call it is I don't know whether it's me just being a bit rubbish but you have to pull the little lever back on the the back of the gear stick to engage drive with your foot on the brake and the same thing for reverse but there's been a couple of times when I've struggled to get it to go from neutral to reverse or neutral to drive and then the electric handbrake dunno whether it's meant to disengage automatically or not but a couple of times I've want to drive off and it's not disengaged automatically and I've had to do it manually now that might just be me being cack-handed but but that sister it's been a frustrating a couple of times so one of my final impressions of this car well I'm hugely impressed with it if I'm honest I drove the Quadrifoglio and loved that but then I was expecting to love that it's right up my street it's my kind of car is got lots of power lots of performance it sounds amazing so stepping into this with it being diesel I kind of thought it might be a bit disappointing but it really hasn't been it's got when you put it in the dynamic setting on the DNA the DNA switch it has a lovely lovely sporty response the feeling of the steering the the balance through the corners is very very impressive and mapped to this 8-speed gearbox whether you're driving in Auto or whether you grab a paddle it really is a very responsive Drive and it kind of gives you that smile on your face that you maybe don't expect when you're looking at buying a saloon car so if you are out there and you're looking at a four-door saloon you really need to put one of these in in the mix to be honest especially if you're looking at the normal sort of BMW 3-series and Mercedes c-class and and so on you know I like the fact that this is a bit different it's an alpha it's got pink I think it looks great from the outside this special early version I think looks really nice from the back nice sort of twin exhausts inside it's a very comfortable place to be I've been driving the car for quite a while now as I said before it's maybe not got the drama I would want from an Alfa but it's very functional and easy to use which I guess is the whole point so I have a couple of thank-yous I need to say thank you to Alfa Romeo UK for access to the car and the car was organised by the the Craig TV car collective so a huge thank you to those guys for organising the event today and inviting me and giving me access to such a great car but I hope you've enjoyed the video if you have done so give me a thumbs up comment are always welcome and if you haven't done so already please subscribe to petrol bed for plenty more content to come and I will see you on the next film guys you take care drive safe\n"