Alfa Romeo Giulietta Lusso | Shed of the Week
Big-engined Alfas are in short supply for less than £2k - so how about a 1.4-litre MultiAir with a manual 'box?
Once upon a time, you could hardly move in SOTW for Alfa Romeos. Not just any old Alfas either, but the sort of Alfa that quite a few of us would actively seek out nowadays, like the 3.0-litre V6 166 that appeared here in 2012 at £950 or the 164 2.0-litre Twin Spark that popped up a year later for the princely sum of £250.
Perhaps predictably, that 164 didn’t make it through its next MOT, but the 166 soldiered (or perhaps soldered) on all the way to last year, by which point it had done over 185,000 miles. The last 3.0-litre Busso V6 to appear here was another 164 back in 2019, which turned out to be its last legal year on the UK road network.
It pains Shed to admit it, but he reckons that the once-plump sector of the Alfa Romeo Venn diagram where the circles marked ‘affordable’ and ‘desirable’ overlapped is now pretty much non-existent. Even the sweet-driving four-cylinder 156s that used to be ten a penny on here, almost literally, have all but vanished from the sub-£2k classifieds. So if you’re a shed hunter looking for the cross and serpent badge at a bargain price, you’ll need to be focusing on more recent and somewhat less iconic models like the one you’re looking at here.
Alfa launched the 940 series Giulietta in 2010 and discontinued it in 2020. Sales wise you’d think it would have done better than it did. After all, it embodied all the traits that lifelong Alfa fans had come to know and expect: poor quality, iffy reliability, an awkward driving position, that sort of thing. Looking at it now though, five years after its demise, could it be that we have undervalued the Giulietta? The exact value of this one, as determined by its vendor anyway, is £1,500. Is it worth that?
Well, the Giulie actually handled very tidily, even if that was achieved via the old-school method of giving its old Stilo/Bravo platform a tooth-janglingly hard ride. That feature didn’t play well among ordinary folk who had found out some time earlier that they could have handling and comfort at the same time in their humbler (and cheaper) Fords, and to some extent their Volkswagens. In harder economic times, the heritage, character and pizzazz that had lured buyers into Alfa showrooms didn’t seem so important anymore. The market voted with its feet and that was the end of that.
What about this specimen, though? We have had a Giulietta in SOTW before, a JDTM diesel. Today’s one, however, has the 1.4 TB MultiAir four-cylinder turbo petrol engine and a six-speed manual gearbox. The sellers say it’s a Lusso, which Shed insists is Latin for leather. In his defence, Lussos often do have leathery cabins, but in this case it’s cloth, which shows up stains more readily but is kinder to human backsides in winter.
Outside of Shed’s mad world lusso of course means light. This model was supposed to weigh in at just 1,365kg, or about the same as a quarter of an EV. That does indeed sound quite lusso, but you then wonder why it took 168hp at 5,500rpm and 184lb ft at 2,500rpm nearly eight seconds to get it through the 0-62mph test. Still, the upside was a claimed combined fuel consumption figure of nearly 49mpg and a CO2 figure of 134g/km, which, if Shed has got this right, should bestow it with an almost affordable annual tax bill of £195.
Some of the suspension components on these were apparently made of cheese. What with Giuliettas not being the best cars on the market as far as noise-insulation went, you sometimes wished it was a softer type of cheese because suspension noise was ever-present. The fuel filler cap and door handles were fragile, plastic quality generally didn’t inspire, paint could lose its lacquer and electrical items like the sat nav, air con and start-stop system were wont to fritz out – though that last complaint could sometimes be improved by fitting a better battery. Wiring for the tailgate could snap inside the concertina hoses, negatively impacting on the operation of the tail lights and rear wiper, whose shaft seal could allow water to leak into the boot.
Pre-2013 TB Multiairs like this one did suffer from stuck actuators and from their oil and filters not being changed often enough. You didn’t want to take a chance on extending the cambelt changes either. Alfa said every five years or 72,000 miles would be fine, but less optimistic/more realistic experts preferred the safety of a 4-year/48,000-mile schedule. Still, despite our cheap taunt earlier, core Giulietta reliability seems to have been not too bad. The MOT on this one lasts to December and is advisory-free. One last thing: you couldn’t see much out of the back window, so bodywork damage at the back of these isn’t uncommon. If you need any advice on that the postmistress can probably oblige as she has had some small experience of light rear-ending.
The harness to the boot fails, killing all the lights and is a bit of a pain to fix apparently.
Generally noisier than a golf and a bit more jiggly. 1750TB goes pretty well - feels punchier than the numbers might suggest.
Mine was significantly more expensive and looks a bit scruffier than this one advertised.
As you say, a little niggly, but other than a total electrical failure (battery) 3 weeks in, hasn’t actually let us down.
And all the ones I saw advertised privately were proper enthusiast cars. Big wedges of service history, matching good quality tyres and absolutely immaculately clean.
The downside is that the rear legroom is awful and the boot is tiny.
That said, I've always preferred the Mito as far as this era of Alfa goes, rebodied Punto though it may be. Just an overall more resolved design imo. Not enough that I'd buy one, but they're one of those cars I think to myself "oh I do like those" whenever I walk past one.
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