If you're like us, I think it's safe to say there's two things you already know about folks like us with what I call, "The Sickness":
1) We get bored easily when it comes to vehicles. We dig change.
2) Time is our greatest asset. We don't have all day to filter out the results of an auto review.
So, here's what you need to know. Our friends across the pond put together a group test consisting of the Alfa Romeo Giulia, BMW 3-Series and Jaguar XE. Obviously, it's a super hot category to be competing in at the moment and the 3'er is one of the class leaders — where is the Mercedes-Benz C-Class?
Since Alfa is thought to be a performance leviathan, can it unseat the Bimmer and Jag? See the verdict below and let us know your thoughts!
The verdict:
All of which feeds in to the idea that the Giulia is not only a little bit more animated and a little less constrained by weight, but also that it better resists the apparently necessary level of benign sediment that settles on its rivals. Does this ultimately lift it above them? Well, it comes tantalisingly close on Brecon. Likewise later, as I look back on the contest in retrospect. The lightness, the flatness of its cornering stance, the damping, the front end and the steering remain embedded in the memory, evoking the same sense of excitable completeness that BMW and Jaguar seemingly evoke without effort. For Alfa Romeo, it is a staggering long-jump leap forward and embedded in the sternum of everything the Giulia does well.
It’s almost churlish, then, to peg it back with ‘but’, ‘however’ and ‘were it not so’, yet the broader picture is admittedly less absorbing. Alfa’s oversight still slips when it comes to marshalling how well put together the car is, how it functions in a mundane switch-flicking way, how quiet it ought to be when subjected to wind flow and just how important infotainment is to the way buyers regard almost any product on four wheels. In this regard and a few more besides, both the 320d and XE romp over the Giulia. Nonetheless, to apply the standard modern Alfa adage – that there’s a great car here waiting to get out – is similarly unfair. The Giulia is already great and only awaits the attention to detail that may yet deliver a class leader. Improbably, it fully merits our continued patience.
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