The Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio: A High-Performance SUV to Drive on the Edge

According to the Alfa Romeo press office, the engine of this car has been derived from a Ferrari V8, but with only two cylinders locked off. This modification could be seen as a spin move, but it's clear that the engineers at Alfa Romeo have put their heart and soul into creating a truly unique powerplant. The result is an engine that sounds way better than its competitors, with a distinctive double-wishbone suspension system that keeps the tire contact patch with the ground consistent even when turning.

The Stelvio Quadrifoglio's driving experience is not to be missed. When put in race mode, stability is turned off, allowing the driver to hear the noise of the fantastic V6 engine and feel the car's incredible grip and handling. The gearbox may be a little slow compared to dual-clutch systems, but it's more than sufficient for a car that can deliver such an exhilarating driving experience. The brakes are also noteworthy, as the car has been tested on track and proven itself to be capable of passing much sportier cars.

One of the most impressive aspects of the Stelvio Quadrifoglio is its ability to hold the car upright without it rolling over, a common problem with sporty SUVs. This is achieved through a combination of clever chassis design and careful suspension tuning. However, when the driver backs off and enters normal mode, the suspension can feel quite far out, which may unsettle some drivers on certain surfaces. This is similar to a Porsche Macan with adapted dampers, but the Stelvio Quadrifoglio's unique character makes it harder to live with in everyday driving.

So why should anyone consider buying the Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio? For one thing, it's a special car that truly stands out from the crowd. The engine is glorious, and when put into race mode, the driver can unleash their inner racing enthusiast and enjoy a truly exhilarating experience. Whether you're cruising through the city or carving up the countryside, the Stelvio Quadrifoglio is an absolute blast to drive.

But what about performance? How does the Stelvio Quadrifoglio stack up against its competitors? To find out, we put it to the test with a launch from 0-60mph and a quarter-mile run. With no launch control system to rely on, the driver must carefully balance brake boost with acceleration to get the best results. And what better way to experience this than in manual mode?

The result of our testing? A respectable 11.9 seconds for the quarter mile, with a blistering 3.6 seconds to reach 60mph from rest. Not bad at all, especially considering the car's size and weight. But what about its handling and braking performance on paper? The Stelvio Quadrifoglio truly delivers, with a driving experience that is hard to beat in an SUV.

If you're looking for a fun-to-drive high-performance SUV with plenty of style and passion, look no further than the Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio. It's not for everyone - some drivers may find the suspension tuning too far out when in normal mode - but for those who crave excitement behind the wheel, this car is sure to deliver. And if you enjoy the video, be sure to give it a like and let us know in the comments what other videos you'd like to see from our channel. You can also sign up to our Car Wow newsletter for the latest news and reviews from the world of cars.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is the new alpha stelvio quadrifoglio can you guess why it's a little bit like the milan cathedral yeah you don't know do you it's because they've both recently been renovated they've been renovated in a way that is sympathetic to their original designs now i'm going to talk you through all the renovations that alfa has made to this car some of them have improved it they've also failed to improve some of the things that was wrong with the old version and i'll tell you about those as well also i'm going to take it for a drive give it a bit of a hooning and launch it to see how quick it is from not to 60 miles an hour and if i'm brave i'll also test it over the standing quarter mile because this is car wow and i'm matt watson and that's how i roll buying a new car then head to car wow and my team will help you find your next car at a fair price car wow your one stop car buying comparison site let's start this video by talking about the price so the alpha stelvio quadrifoglio starts from 74 000 pounds it's quite expensive though you can save an average of just over twelve thousand pounds i've won through car wow so then when you consider the performance it's not bad value actually if you want to check out the savings on this or any other car just click on the pop-out banner up there to go to car wow check it out straight away alternative if you want to do that at a later date and read our reviews and all that kind of thing and compare offers on cars simply google help me car wow and my team and i will help you choose the right car for you and get it for a fair price for one of our trusted dealers i'm going to talk you through the design changes that alpha has made to this car and it's going to be very quick smoke tail lights and an akrapovic exhaust now it's optional and you can get it with carbon fiber surrounds then we move down the side you can get some new alloy wheels these are the standard 20s which you get before but there's some new ones at the front you can get some brake calipers in different colors rather than the red ones here then at the front the only change is this got this black surround for the v in the grille and that is your lot i guess i didn't really need to change it much because it's always been a good looking car and it does stand out over the normal starvio with the more aggressive front bumper with all these kind of fins and stuff like that and then at the back you've got deeper rear bumpers and it sits low to the ground there is of course quadrifoglio badging which stands for cloverleaf you've got these gills yeah and the bonnet oh i've got to say i do really like this paint this pearlescent paint just glistens in the sunshine it's just a shame we didn't clean it why didn't we clean it jack just couldn't find any water that's a crap excuse can i talk you through all the chassis upgrades that this quadrophilia version of the stelvio has over the standard car most notably you get some high performance sports brakes you've got 360 millimeter disc at front gripped by six piston calipers and at the back you've got three 50 mm discs grip by four piston calipers should we check them out let's check them out let's see what the braking performance is like on this car let's see how well this car breaks so i'm gonna do a full emergency stop from 70 miles an hour measure the distance here we go here's the line here we go here we go here we go fought for the floor this is my old specialist timing gear bear with me use this gopro to show you so it's stopped in 42.7 meters and that is very good the stavio quadrifoglio comes with adaptive dampers as standard which is handy because then if you want to drive in race or dynamic and you're on a bumpy road you press that and it slackens them off a little bit which is handy because this car does have quite stiff suspension because it's uprated over the standard car and you've also got beefier anti-roll bars to stop it rolling and leaning in the bends being an suv the stelvio quadrifoglio is four-wheel drive but it's an italian four-wheel drive system which means most of the time the front wheels can't be bothered working the rears are doing all the effort you know but when there's a bit of slip at the back the car can send power to the front you know it's like mamma mia we need to get out of this corner terrible accent sorry anyway another thing this car has is a rear limited slip differential and it's electronically controlled so it can send power to the rear wheel with the most traction to help catapult you out of beds this is the reason to buy this car if you're an suv with an awesome engine 2.9 liter twin turbo v6 90 degree v6 to be precise puts out 510 horsepower 600 newton meters of torque and it's got an eight-speed automatic gearbox unfortunately not with launch control but still it's got top speed this car of 176 miles an hour and not 60 i can't remember what is it 3.8 3.8 seconds but is that right can it really do it in 3.8 seconds does anyone want to find out we have to launch it but you're going to have to hold on for the rest of the video because i'm going to launch it towards the end don't you get skipping i'm watching you here on the inside the quadrophilia version of the stavio it's a lovely sport steering with the starter button on it as well you get carbon fiber about the place there's red stitching you've got sporty seats you've got big aluminium pedals it's nice now the updates that they've made is to change the layout of the pod here in the center console there's a bit too much plastic going on before they've made it more carbon fibery also you now get more leather here on the gear selector there's also quadrifoglio badgers on the steering wheel on the dials and on the kick plates biggest change though is this they've updated the infotainment system it is better than before and now it's a touchscreen as well as being able to be controlled by this rotary dial it's also now got android auto and apple carplay they've also changed some of the menus and the operating system to make it slicker but it still doesn't feel as good to use as the systems you get in say a bmw x4m in fact if you want to see my 400 video review of that car i'll put a link up there click on that you can go watch that oh one of the things the bmw doesn't have that this has is wonderful massive aluminium gear selectors these are lovely they are mounted on the steering column so that when you turn the wheel you still know exactly where they are if you need to pull another gear here in the back the sporty thing continues with all carbon fiber the red stitching the sporty seats with alcantara which grip your bum so that when your dad's driving like a you're flying around all over the place and of course you've got the same red seatbelts which look epic other than that it's just like a normal stavio so okay knee room for an suv decent headroom though an all round fairly reasonable final area of practicality the boot now it's smaller than its key competitors still it's large enough for most people 525 liters and this one appears to be filled with all of jack's crap jack what's with you you haven't cleaned the car and it's just full of junk what's going on demonstrating the capacity it's got an answer for everything hasn't he now i've got an answer for this car small boot if you're watching a high performance suv from italy maserati levante trafeo you wanna watch that video i'll put a link popping out up there go watch it it's insane actually you should see how quick that color can go from naught to sixty i don't know what i'm going on about now i'm losing the plot and that brings down to five annoying things in this car if you wanna experience the full fruitiness of this car's epic exhaust noise you have to have it in race mode otherwise you won't get the full effect and that's particularly annoying because in race mode the car automatically turns out fits traction control maybe i just want to listen to the exhaust without putting my life at risk i mean how italian is that good so the high performance brakes are a little bit grabby so when you're trying to maneuver at low speed you end up kind of like jerking along the road yeah if you're american you're probably laughing at that as an innuendo didn't mean it i'm british another thing that you find is this the rear parking brake makes a weird noise like this a slightly distressed penguin you don't expect an italian high performance v6 to be particularly economical and indeed this car isn't it's averaging 18.7 miles per gallon and when you combine that with the fact that the fuel capacity of the tank is 64 litres you end up with a real world range of 252 miles and like all this car's high performance competitors there is no launch control even when you're in race mode look race mode left on the brake for the throttle and it starts climbing through its brakes and trying to head off up the road why don't they give it launch control one of the things i used to like to do with old alpha high performance v6s was open the bottom and just caught up with their beautiful engines this one though it's got this horrible plastic cover and underneath it i'm sure i'm going to find lots of polished chrome and loveliness and i've just chafed my knuckles come on one last one oh that hurts it's got to be worth it i hope it's worth it how do i even get it out there is that it it's like when darth vader took off his mask dougly it's not all negative though here's five good things about this car the style viewer uses quite a lot of aluminium in its construction so it keeps the weight down at various body panels as a result this car tips the scales at 1830 kilos which is actually quite light for an suv a bmw x3m weighs in at over 200 kilos more than with fat german the prop shaft that sends the power from the engine to the rear wheels is made out of carbon fiber so it's light less inertia this is more responsive when you put your foot down i'm trying to find it can't see it i'd like to see it according to the alfa romeo press office this car's engine has been derived from a ferrari v8 only with two of the cylinders locked off though that could just be spin anyway you can still tell it to your friends to impress them if you're that kind of person look at this you've got double wishbone suspension that keeps the tyre contact patch with the ground consistent even when you're turning this is the stuff of racing cars this stelvio quadrifoglio just sounds way better than its competitors have a listen to this oh yeah there's no soft limiters here all right let's see what this alpha starvio is like to drive got it in race mode which means stability is off i want to hear the noise of the fantastic v6 ah it's just so good for an suv this car just grips and really handles so well and it's got such a rare drive bias to it what a car what an engine the gearbox may be a little bit slow it's not as bam bam bam bam as a dual clutcher but it's good enough the brakes are good on this car i've actually had this thing on track and as a track day bedford autodrome and people like what's he doing in his suv and i was actually passing loads of people in sportier cars because it does handle that well as suvs go i think this is the sport is to drive you do feel like you're a sports car that's raised up the engine's glorious the chassis the way it just holds the car upright without it rolling over which is a big problem with sporty suvs it does a good job of that but there is a price to pay when you back off and you go into normal mode you do notice on certain surfaces that that suspension is quite far so the car can't feel a bit unsettled as you're just driving around and and that can get on your nerves a little bit something like a porsche macan when you've got the adapted dampers on it is easier to live with and a bit more comfortable this is a special car it really is and you know then you go into race mode again and you're like right i want to have some fun i need to just drive like a complete idiot in it and the main reason why i bought it is the engine the engine is glorious so let's finally check out the performance because it is special now i'm going to launch the car see how quick it is from north to 60 and over the standing quarter mile check this out i have my arrowed specialist timing gear here it's very old so with this car there's no launch control system you just break boost it it's that simple but it likes to push through its brakes so you've got to balance it just right let's do it so i've got it in sports mode no see it's trying to drive through there we go brake boost it here we go he said for breast experience have it in manual but i'm not going to do that again best experience when launching is to just let it do it in drive because it rips through that first gear right so in a brake booster and it likes to try and drive through its brakes so go get just right that's a good one come on it's quick you know this thing oh come on here comes the quarter mile ah let's see what it did i'm excited to see what it did all brakes are good i'll show you on this gopro 12.1 seconds now i know i can do better than that let's try it again it's all about the brake boosting come on now let's do better what we're gonna get this time hahaha yes quite a mile 11.9 seconds can you see that there it's really tough with this old specialist timing gear not so special now are ya naught 60 3.6 seconds i'll take that it's good in it for an suv so then what's my final verdict on the alpha stelvio quadrifoglio should you avoid it should you consider it should you shortlist it or should you just go right ahead and buy it well if you want a fun to drive high performance suv with plenty of style and passion should go right ahead and buy this hey if you enjoyed the video please give it a like also let me know if any other videos you'd like me to do in the comments below if you click there you can watch some more videos and if you click on that box there you can actually sign up to the car wow newsletter where we'll keep you up to date of all the latest news and reviews from the car world in between these video uploads so just click on that sign up it's completely free and of course you can cancel anytime you want to thanks for watching see you next timethis is the new alpha stelvio quadrifoglio can you guess why it's a little bit like the milan cathedral yeah you don't know do you it's because they've both recently been renovated they've been renovated in a way that is sympathetic to their original designs now i'm going to talk you through all the renovations that alfa has made to this car some of them have improved it they've also failed to improve some of the things that was wrong with the old version and i'll tell you about those as well also i'm going to take it for a drive give it a bit of a hooning and launch it to see how quick it is from not to 60 miles an hour and if i'm brave i'll also test it over the standing quarter mile because this is car wow and i'm matt watson and that's how i roll buying a new car then head to car wow and my team will help you find your next car at a fair price car wow your one stop car buying comparison site let's start this video by talking about the price so the alpha stelvio quadrifoglio starts from 74 000 pounds it's quite expensive though you can save an average of just over twelve thousand pounds i've won through car wow so then when you consider the performance it's not bad value actually if you want to check out the savings on this or any other car just click on the pop-out banner up there to go to car wow check it out straight away alternative if you want to do that at a later date and read our reviews and all that kind of thing and compare offers on cars simply google help me car wow and my team and i will help you choose the right car for you and get it for a fair price for one of our trusted dealers i'm going to talk you through the design changes that alpha has made to this car and it's going to be very quick smoke tail lights and an akrapovic exhaust now it's optional and you can get it with carbon fiber surrounds then we move down the side you can get some new alloy wheels these are the standard 20s which you get before but there's some new ones at the front you can get some brake calipers in different colors rather than the red ones here then at the front the only change is this got this black surround for the v in the grille and that is your lot i guess i didn't really need to change it much because it's always been a good looking car and it does stand out over the normal starvio with the more aggressive front bumper with all these kind of fins and stuff like that and then at the back you've got deeper rear bumpers and it sits low to the ground there is of course quadrifoglio badging which stands for cloverleaf you've got these gills yeah and the bonnet oh i've got to say i do really like this paint this pearlescent paint just glistens in the sunshine it's just a shame we didn't clean it why didn't we clean it jack just couldn't find any water that's a crap excuse can i talk you through all the chassis upgrades that this quadrophilia version of the stelvio has over the standard car most notably you get some high performance sports brakes you've got 360 millimeter disc at front gripped by six piston calipers and at the back you've got three 50 mm discs grip by four piston calipers should we check them out let's check them out let's see what the braking performance is like on this car let's see how well this car breaks so i'm gonna do a full emergency stop from 70 miles an hour measure the distance here we go here's the line here we go here we go here we go fought for the floor this is my old specialist timing gear bear with me use this gopro to show you so it's stopped in 42.7 meters and that is very good the stavio quadrifoglio comes with adaptive dampers as standard which is handy because then if you want to drive in race or dynamic and you're on a bumpy road you press that and it slackens them off a little bit which is handy because this car does have quite stiff suspension because it's uprated over the standard car and you've also got beefier anti-roll bars to stop it rolling and leaning in the bends being an suv the stelvio quadrifoglio is four-wheel drive but it's an italian four-wheel drive system which means most of the time the front wheels can't be bothered working the rears are doing all the effort you know but when there's a bit of slip at the back the car can send power to the front you know it's like mamma mia we need to get out of this corner terrible accent sorry anyway another thing this car has is a rear limited slip differential and it's electronically controlled so it can send power to the rear wheel with the most traction to help catapult you out of beds this is the reason to buy this car if you're an suv with an awesome engine 2.9 liter twin turbo v6 90 degree v6 to be precise puts out 510 horsepower 600 newton meters of torque and it's got an eight-speed automatic gearbox unfortunately not with launch control but still it's got top speed this car of 176 miles an hour and not 60 i can't remember what is it 3.8 3.8 seconds but is that right can it really do it in 3.8 seconds does anyone want to find out we have to launch it but you're going to have to hold on for the rest of the video because i'm going to launch it towards the end don't you get skipping i'm watching you here on the inside the quadrophilia version of the stavio it's a lovely sport steering with the starter button on it as well you get carbon fiber about the place there's red stitching you've got sporty seats you've got big aluminium pedals it's nice now the updates that they've made is to change the layout of the pod here in the center console there's a bit too much plastic going on before they've made it more carbon fibery also you now get more leather here on the gear selector there's also quadrifoglio badgers on the steering wheel on the dials and on the kick plates biggest change though is this they've updated the infotainment system it is better than before and now it's a touchscreen as well as being able to be controlled by this rotary dial it's also now got android auto and apple carplay they've also changed some of the menus and the operating system to make it slicker but it still doesn't feel as good to use as the systems you get in say a bmw x4m in fact if you want to see my 400 video review of that car i'll put a link up there click on that you can go watch that oh one of the things the bmw doesn't have that this has is wonderful massive aluminium gear selectors these are lovely they are mounted on the steering column so that when you turn the wheel you still know exactly where they are if you need to pull another gear here in the back the sporty thing continues with all carbon fiber the red stitching the sporty seats with alcantara which grip your bum so that when your dad's driving like a you're flying around all over the place and of course you've got the same red seatbelts which look epic other than that it's just like a normal stavio so okay knee room for an suv decent headroom though an all round fairly reasonable final area of practicality the boot now it's smaller than its key competitors still it's large enough for most people 525 liters and this one appears to be filled with all of jack's crap jack what's with you you haven't cleaned the car and it's just full of junk what's going on demonstrating the capacity it's got an answer for everything hasn't he now i've got an answer for this car small boot if you're watching a high performance suv from italy maserati levante trafeo you wanna watch that video i'll put a link popping out up there go watch it it's insane actually you should see how quick that color can go from naught to sixty i don't know what i'm going on about now i'm losing the plot and that brings down to five annoying things in this car if you wanna experience the full fruitiness of this car's epic exhaust noise you have to have it in race mode otherwise you won't get the full effect and that's particularly annoying because in race mode the car automatically turns out fits traction control maybe i just want to listen to the exhaust without putting my life at risk i mean how italian is that good so the high performance brakes are a little bit grabby so when you're trying to maneuver at low speed you end up kind of like jerking along the road yeah if you're american you're probably laughing at that as an innuendo didn't mean it i'm british another thing that you find is this the rear parking brake makes a weird noise like this a slightly distressed penguin you don't expect an italian high performance v6 to be particularly economical and indeed this car isn't it's averaging 18.7 miles per gallon and when you combine that with the fact that the fuel capacity of the tank is 64 litres you end up with a real world range of 252 miles and like all this car's high performance competitors there is no launch control even when you're in race mode look race mode left on the brake for the throttle and it starts climbing through its brakes and trying to head off up the road why don't they give it launch control one of the things i used to like to do with old alpha high performance v6s was open the bottom and just caught up with their beautiful engines this one though it's got this horrible plastic cover and underneath it i'm sure i'm going to find lots of polished chrome and loveliness and i've just chafed my knuckles come on one last one oh that hurts it's got to be worth it i hope it's worth it how do i even get it out there is that it it's like when darth vader took off his mask dougly it's not all negative though here's five good things about this car the style viewer uses quite a lot of aluminium in its construction so it keeps the weight down at various body panels as a result this car tips the scales at 1830 kilos which is actually quite light for an suv a bmw x3m weighs in at over 200 kilos more than with fat german the prop shaft that sends the power from the engine to the rear wheels is made out of carbon fiber so it's light less inertia this is more responsive when you put your foot down i'm trying to find it can't see it i'd like to see it according to the alfa romeo press office this car's engine has been derived from a ferrari v8 only with two of the cylinders locked off though that could just be spin anyway you can still tell it to your friends to impress them if you're that kind of person look at this you've got double wishbone suspension that keeps the tyre contact patch with the ground consistent even when you're turning this is the stuff of racing cars this stelvio quadrifoglio just sounds way better than its competitors have a listen to this oh yeah there's no soft limiters here all right let's see what this alpha starvio is like to drive got it in race mode which means stability is off i want to hear the noise of the fantastic v6 ah it's just so good for an suv this car just grips and really handles so well and it's got such a rare drive bias to it what a car what an engine the gearbox may be a little bit slow it's not as bam bam bam bam as a dual clutcher but it's good enough the brakes are good on this car i've actually had this thing on track and as a track day bedford autodrome and people like what's he doing in his suv and i was actually passing loads of people in sportier cars because it does handle that well as suvs go i think this is the sport is to drive you do feel like you're a sports car that's raised up the engine's glorious the chassis the way it just holds the car upright without it rolling over which is a big problem with sporty suvs it does a good job of that but there is a price to pay when you back off and you go into normal mode you do notice on certain surfaces that that suspension is quite far so the car can't feel a bit unsettled as you're just driving around and and that can get on your nerves a little bit something like a porsche macan when you've got the adapted dampers on it is easier to live with and a bit more comfortable this is a special car it really is and you know then you go into race mode again and you're like right i want to have some fun i need to just drive like a complete idiot in it and the main reason why i bought it is the engine the engine is glorious so let's finally check out the performance because it is special now i'm going to launch the car see how quick it is from north to 60 and over the standing quarter mile check this out i have my arrowed specialist timing gear here it's very old so with this car there's no launch control system you just break boost it it's that simple but it likes to push through its brakes so you've got to balance it just right let's do it so i've got it in sports mode no see it's trying to drive through there we go brake boost it here we go he said for breast experience have it in manual but i'm not going to do that again best experience when launching is to just let it do it in drive because it rips through that first gear right so in a brake booster and it likes to try and drive through its brakes so go get just right that's a good one come on it's quick you know this thing oh come on here comes the quarter mile ah let's see what it did i'm excited to see what it did all brakes are good i'll show you on this gopro 12.1 seconds now i know i can do better than that let's try it again it's all about the brake boosting come on now let's do better what we're gonna get this time hahaha yes quite a mile 11.9 seconds can you see that there it's really tough with this old specialist timing gear not so special now are ya naught 60 3.6 seconds i'll take that it's good in it for an suv so then what's my final verdict on the alpha stelvio quadrifoglio should you avoid it should you consider it should you shortlist it or should you just go right ahead and buy it well if you want a fun to drive high performance suv with plenty of style and passion should go right ahead and buy this hey if you enjoyed the video please give it a like also let me know if any other videos you'd like me to do in the comments below if you click there you can watch some more videos and if you click on that box there you can actually sign up to the car wow newsletter where we'll keep you up to date of all the latest news and reviews from the car world in between these video uploads so just click on that sign up it's completely free and of course you can cancel anytime you want to thanks for watching see you next time\n"