It is when you press this that the fun begins. It utters the kind of gurgling and popping you just don’t expect on an SUV and when you put your foot down it is marvellously responsive.
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Alfa Romeo calls it the Symphony of Power – it’s the sound you experience in each of the drive modes on its new Stelvio Quadrifoglio.
Maggie Barry takes to the Scottish roads in the mega Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio
The other modes form part of what Alfa Romeo call the Stelvio’s DNA – they are Dynamic, Natural and Advanced Efficiency each separately orchestrating how you hear this great car.
The Stelvio has been with us for some time but the introduction of the Quadrofoglio to the range takes it to a whole new level and the stats are impressive.
Alfa Romeo took this car to the Nurburgring where it clocked up a record lap time of 7mins 51secs for a production SUV and while we are unlikely in our daily grind to invest in that sort of speed, the top speed if you are in a hurry to get from A to B is 176mph. If it is just the 0-62 figure you are interested in, then that would be 3.8 seconds. So no ordinary SUV then.
The Quadrifoglio is a superb looking car – well it is an Alfa – with the company’s signature grille, body-coloured skirts, big bold alloys, and an integrated rear spoiler and muscular wheel arches. Of course, it also sports the green four-leaf clover badge – the quadrifoglio – on a white background so that everyone knows it’s unique.
Inside it is beautifully stylish with black leather across the dash with red stitching, bags of carbon fibre finish including the amazing Sparco Carbon shell Sports seats, a flat-bottomed sports steering wheel that feels very good to the touch and a mean machine red start button on the steering wheel.
It is when you press this that the fun begins. It utters the kind of gurgling and popping you just don’t expect on an SUV and when you put your foot down it is marvellously responsive.
It is a four-wheel drive beast but so perfectly balanced that you would never guess sitting inside. You can sling it around corners and motor it through hairpins without a murmur. When the car feels you need extra torque, it will send it to the desired area so that the Stelvio Quadrifoglio stays glued to the road – always.
As a test we drove it on some of Scotland’s most challenging roads in The Trossachs region, stepping nimbly aside and on a sixpence when we needed to pull into a passing place. It pushed forward and relaxed back when necessary and always to the highly pleasant backdrop thrum of its engine – the 2.9-litre bi-turbo.
The systems are all worked by the brainbox – what Alfa calls Chassis Domain Control. Making sure that features like the torque vectoring, brake system and active transfer case are all singing from the same hymn book to give owners, the drive they always imagined they would get sitting here.
It also comes with plenty of safety systems like adaptive cruise control, blind spot monitoring, lane departure warning, forward collision warning with an automatic emergency brake, rear cross path detection and hill descent control among others.
The Alfa Romeo Stelvio in Quadrofiglio guise is lithe and beautiful reminding you that an SUV need not only be for the family it can be for the driver too who still retains their passion for the road.
Car reviewed: Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio - On the road £69,500 0-62mph 3.8 secs Top speed 176mph Fuel Economy combined 28.8mpg CO2 emissions 227g/km Engine 2891cc V6 premium unleaded EU6 Max Power Engine 510hp@6500rpm Engine Torque 600Nm@2500rpm Transmission 8-speed automatic Q4 All-Wheel Drive
A superb looking SUV
Perfectly balanced
Not ordinary and great fun
Too fast for some
What the others say about the Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio on YouTube...
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