Alfa Romeo Tonale review

But is it enough to turn round the fortunes of this storied Italian marque? No one could accuse the Stelvio, this car’s bigger SUV sister of being anything other than a fine drive, but sales have been parlous. Similarly, the Giulia, which makes up the second and last model in its range before the Tonale goes on sale later this year. Quality, while not great, is far better than it used to be.

How do you solve a problem like Alfa? As Rodgers & Hammerstein didn’t write it and moreover, is the Tonale the car with which to do it? You might also enquire as to why a grand Italian marque is producing a family SUV, which goes into a massive market sector (worth 2.5 million sales a year in Europe), but is more an habitué of the shopping mall car park than the pantheon of motoring legends.

New boss, Jean Phillipe Imparato, is passionate about the brand, but his objectives are clear: ‘I need stability,’ he says. ‘I must feed the profit of Alfa Romeo. I can’t be out of the main segments of the world.’ To be fair, with cars like the Alfasud hatchback, the Giulietta saloons and the little Mito hatchback, Alfa hasn’t shied away from the mass market in the past, either – remember the Arna, anyone?

Imparato has a five-year plan (Alfa always has a five-year plan) and is promising a new model every year until 2027 when the firm goes all-electric, which means it will be Stellantis’ first all-only brand. The first electric model will be a small B-segment crossover slated for 2025, which despite strong rumours won’t be called Brennero.

‘It really is not going to be called Brennero,’ says Imparato clutching my forearm. He’s currently sitting through a naming panel watching with the detachment of a Frenchman, as Italians argue the case for their favourite mountain, lake, town or Italian icon.

‘My only protection is up,’ says Imparato gesturing at the ceiling. ‘For the first time in my life I am not under the pressure of volume.’ He says that a newly electrified Alfa Romeo will also contest the D-segment (BMW 3 Series) and even the E-segment (BMW 5 Series).

Be that as it may, for the moment you should prepare yourself for what are hoped to be distinguished new Alfa Romeo models competing in some highly undistinguished market segments…

So the Tonale goes on sale in the UK this autumn with two trim levels (Ti and Veloce) with three main drivetrains of which the UK will get just two. Engine choice will be two mild hybrid units displacing 1.5-litres with a 20bhp, 48-volt starter/generator and a 0.77kWh lithium battery to amp up the power and drivetrain response, and a choice between 128bhp (which won’t come to the UK) and 158bhp which comes courtesy of a variable-geometry turbocharger and is the model driven here. Both engines drive the front wheels only via a seven-speed, twin-clutch gearbox.

Also arriving this autumn is a 271bhp plug-in hybrid 4×4 version using the 1.3-litre MultiAir engine powering the front wheels via a six-speed automatic transmission and an electric motor driving the rears; it is claimed to have a 40-mile electric range, with acceleration from 0-62mph in 6.2sec.

Performance data for the Hybrid VGT 160 Veloce model I drove this week is a top speed of 131mph, 0-62mph in 8.8sec, fuel consumption of 44.8mpg with CO2 emissions of 144g/km, meaning it has a first-year VED of £230. Prices start at £35,360, which is quite a lot for a brand hovering somewhere between ‘quirky-outside-choice’ and ‘not-on-the-list’.

It’s built at a new plant, part of the Pomigliano d’Arco site near Naples which builds the Fiat Panda and, at one time, the mighty Alfasud. They’re promising up-to-the-minute quality and are backing it with a five-year warranty (though this is still to be confirmed for UK buyers) and an eight-year guarantee on the hybrid battery. Imparato says ‘it’s a matter of trust,’ but also promises this new car will have the ‘the vibe’, although the specs so far indicate something so utterly ordinary you could lose it in a car park of Qashqais and Kugas.

The chassis platform, with its strut-based front suspension and triple-link and strut independent rear, is largely based on that of the Jeep Renegade, which was derived from the Fiat 500X, which in turn was derived from the 2005 Punto. There’ll be some of you doing fair impressions of the crinkly-mouth emoji at this, but to be fair there’s nothing wrong with chassis sharing other than the weight increases which often accompany the practice.

And Alfa has raided the good parts bins for the Tonale, with Brembo disc brakes, a steering system promised to be the most direct in class and Magneti-Marelli-produced frequency selective dampers (with input from Koni) all round, or in the case of the Veloce models, a switchable valve system in the damper to give a choice of sport or normal modes.

Those distinctive telephone dial wheels are reminiscent of the Ronal A1 and Speedline wheels of old Alfas and look terrific, though it’s debatable whether half the customer base would know what to do with an old-fashioned rotary dial phone.

The design isn’t all front end, but such a dramatic start means the sides and rear are inevitably going to be a slight let down. The body sides don’t seem quite as scalloped as the original concept and the haunches not quite as clear cut, though the powered rear tailgate, with its wrap-around rear screen which somehow echoes the rear screen of the Bertone GT Junior models is a lovely touch and unlike the concept, at least this production car has door handles and windscreen wipers.

In the cabin, the Bertone GT Junior style is also evoked with the nacelles over the 12.5-in main instrument binnacle, its radial dials and the most fantastic facsimile of the original odometer. The cabin feels nicely made, with some lovely materials and sexy red stitching round the dash and seats – there’s wit and playfulness here. Those aluminium gearchange paddles show even the upper-premium car makers the way to do these things and the switchgear is generally okay, though the steering column stalks are a bit clunky to use.

The driving position is high, almost too high for some, but if you lower the chair, your feet feel stretched out in front as if sitting in a large canoe – so far, so Alfa, then. In the back, my six-foot frame sits comfortably behind myself (though a little too upright) with my knees just brushing the seat in front and three fingers of head room. The boot displaces 500 litres behind the rear seats and 1550 litres with the seat backs folded onto their bases, which is right in the middle of the rivals’ boot space.

It’s a well-stocked cabin, with a new and highly responsive software system for the 10.25in touch screen, voice recognition that runs through Amazon Alexa’s system, over-the-air updates and there’s a non-fungible token (NFT) system, which while achingly trendy, also gives an indelible record of an individual model’s mileage and service record, which will come as a great comfort to the second-hand market.

Alexa is mercifully quiet, but also a bit pushy about dragging you and your wallet into Bezos World. Ask it to play anything other than American-Chanty ‘Rawk’ and it’s busy trying to get you to sign up to an account at 130km/h on the autostrada.

There’s also a very safety-minded city-braking system, which intervenes early and hard, and keeps shouting at you long after any potential threat has passed in the manner of a patronising school teacher: ‘I’m not angry, just disappointed…’

A launch route round the congested streets alongside Lake Como does wonders for those green-eyed about our job, but would hardly be a stretch for an original Fiat 500 let alone a modern SUV. To be honest, the modern, high-riding SUV sits ill at ease with Alfa Romeo and its flame-red, road burning past. Family SUVs spend most of their lives in the ‘burbs and the stiffest performance driving they’ll do is chasing the last parking spot in Sainsbury’s.

So, do you engineer the drivetrain and suspension to work best on the school run, or for those rare-to-never burn ups on the old Lario street circuit alongside Lake Como, used for motorcycle races between 1921 and 1939, won five times by Tazio Nuvolari on a 350cc Bianchi and then abandoned because it was simply too dangerous?

Obviously, Alfa has done the latter…

Which means the Tonale works best with the drivetrain in its more performance-oriented modes. In the Advance Efficiency (A) mode, it feels strangely lifeless, with accurate but featherlight steering and clunks and clangs from the drivetrain as gears are changed and electricity yields to combustion power.

On 20in Pirelli P Zeros, which are hardly the most forgiving tyres, the wheels don’t exactly fall into each pothole, but they do send a postcard exactly describing its contours and the rear suspension is quite noisy, feeding road racket into the cabin. The brakes feel eager at the top of the pedal travel, but it’s not entirely linear stopping as friction and regeneration systems fade in and out. There’s an over-servoed feeling about the controls, which doesn’t shout ‘high-performance’ in the manner of M BMWs or AMG versions of equivalent Mercedes models.

This continues in Natural (N) mode, where the steering is still over assisted, which means you are continually steering in a straight line. The autostrada performance is composed, however, and it’s refined and quiet enough to enjoy the ride and whatever awful music Alexa has found for you.

So, then you switch into Dynamic (D) mode, turn off the motorway and the car starts to make more sense. The steering has a uniform response and linear weight build up, the brakes are better managed and the little engine gets a chance to give its best. The damping hardens in this car as well, which does a great deal for body control but not a lot for the ride quality.

Displacing 1469cc, the little engine runs in the Ralph Miller/faux Atkinson cycle, where the inlet valves are left open for longer on the compression stroke which allows the expansion ratio to be greater than the compression ratio and gleans every drop of power out of a cylinder of fuel. It’s efficient, but not great to drive as there’s no sense of the engine coming onto its cam profiles, just a linear thrust and buzzing racket at the 5750rpm peak power point.

There’s enough go here to make Tonale an entertaining drive on a winding road, but 158bhp and 1600kg is someway short of the 100bhp per tonne watershed – dammit my Triumph GT6 has over 127bhp/tonne as standard and it’s 55 years old, and just across Lake Como lies Mandello del Lario where in 1972 my Moto Guzzi rolled off the production line of this famous old marque with a power to weight ratio of 340bhp/tonne (as if to remind me a gorgeous lime green example roars past). Who says classics are all rubbish? In other words, if you want to steam up an Alpine Pass, you’ll need to wring the Tonale’s neck and then it gets quite thrashy, but the chassis is composed even if those Pirellis have a tendency to skate across a rain-soaked road.

I managed an overall fuel economy figure of 30.1mpg, which would improve without the hillclimb half way through the drive.

It would be easy to blame some faceless Stellantis bean counter for the Tonale’s performance shortcomings, but as Radiohead didn’t write, they’ve done it to themselves. And having driven just about every alternative out there, the Tonale simply amplifies the problem with the market segment, rather than being simply bad. It’s actually quite a nice family SUV, but not a great Alfa Romeo and I struggled to find ‘the vibe’ here. There’ll be those for whom this is more than enough, especially with the cross-and-snake badge on the bonnet. Will it save the company? Wrong question. Will it make enough money to help save the company? I hope so, it’s easily good enough as long as it starts every morning.

I stopped the Tonale outside the little graveyard in Oliveto Lario and went in to pay my respects to Nicola Romeo, founder of the car maker that bears his name. As far as I could discern, he wasn’t spinning at all, so nor should we…

Alfa Romeo Tonale Hybrid VGT 160 Veloce

Engine: 1469cc, 4-cyl, turbo, hybrid
Transmission: 7-speed dual clutch, FWD
Power: 158bhp
Torque: 177lb ft
Weight: 1600kg

Power-to-weight ratio: 99bhp/tonne
0-62mph: 8.8 seconds
Top speed: 131mph
Price: £35,360

Ti rating: 7/10