2025 Alfa Romeo Junior Ibrida: International quick drive

First things first, ‘Ibrida’ simply means Hybrid in Italian – as most of you probably already know – so don’t worry too much about practising your Italian pronunciation. Instead, let’s refer to this as the Alfa Romeo Junior Hybrid for this quick drive review.

That should simplify things a little, and it's commensurate with Alfa Romeo needing to simplify things in our local market. That is, sales need to climb. It’s a simple equation, but not quite as simple to achieve in real terms. 

Much has been made of Alfa Romeo’s flagging fortunes in our market – whatever the reason – but one thing has become patently clear. Aussie buyers are willing to buy any vehicle that makes financial sense to them. Take the onslaught of sales for challenger brands who have little to no existing heritage in our market. If the numbers add up, Aussie new car buyers will consider it, and the sales data shows that. 

Alfa Romeo has something of an advantage in that sense – decades of history in our market and entrenched love for the product. Even though the current sales figures don’t reflect that. We’ve tested the Alfa Romeo Junior electric version, and if the Hybrid version we’re driving here stacks up, who knows what the sales figures could look like? So buyers in this segment value style and exclusivity? We’ll soon find out. 

Our updated pricing and specification guide details the specifics for the new Junior Hybrid, but to quickly recap, it gets a 1.2-litre, three-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine, with a 48-volt electrical system, and variable geometry for the turbocharger. The numbers? 100kW and 230Nm, which aren’t eye-watering by any means, but will provide enough punch in a compact segment like this one. 

Alfa Junior is covered by a five-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty and is available in six colours. There will be one trim level offered across the two models from launch, meaning the purchasing decision will be an easy one. Standard equipment includes 18-inch alloy wheels, LED matrix headlights, colour-coded exterior trim, gloss-black body kit and mirrors, LED tail-lights, privacy glass, combination cloth and leatherette trim, 60:40-split fold second-row seats and a height-adjustable cargo floor. 

Standard safety kit includes Level 2 autonomous capability, front, rear and side parking sensors, rear-view camera with dynamic lines, intelligent adaptive cruise control, blind-spot assist, autonomous AEB, lane-keep assist, driver behaviour monitor, six airbags, traffic sign recognition, tyre pressure sensors and rain-sensing wipers. The hybrid also gets dual exhaust outlets and paddle shifters. 

To pine for the days when sports car manufacturers built – ahem – sports cars, is to miss the point of where the market currently sits. Globally, even in a driving enthusiast market like Italy, the demand for SUVs is voracious. As such, Alfa Romeo’s focus on delivering a spirited ‘Alfa Romeo-style’ drive in this segment is two things. It’s entirely understandable and also good business sense. 

I’ve owned an Alfa Romeo Spider, so believe me I get it, but I also reluctantly have to accept that you have to ‘give 'em what they want’ to steal an old catchphrase. Compact crossovers are a hotbed of buyer consideration and demand, and the new Junior will slide right into that consideration set – certainly on style alone. Then it needs to back the style up with substance. 

First, on the subject of style, the Alfa Romeo Junior is an attractive SUV. When you’re working with just 4.2m of metal, designers don’t have a big canvas to work with, but they’ve done a beautiful job with this diminutive SUV. It’s not easy to imbue a vehicle of this size with the presence of a much larger vehicle, but the Junior succeeds on that front. From any angle, in any colour, and in any company, the Junior cuts a stylish figure on the street. 

Detail touches like the grille, the wheels, and the LED signatures punctuate the overall package with an Italian sense of flair and eye for detail. If you want to stand out in this segment, the Junior Hybrid is the one to consider. From launch, Alfa Romeo reported a quick 30,000 orders across 38 markets, so the Junior Hybrid certainly made a swift impact. It’s sure to appeal to those buyers in Australia who like the look of the Elettrica model, but aren’t yet ready for a switch to full EV.

I love the triple headlights – Alfa Romeo SZ anyone – and the blacked-out shield grille up front, while you’ll find a nod to Alfa Sud across the rear of the tailgate. Harking back to designs past is easy when you’ve got a studio full of them at the Centro Stile in Milano. Perhaps the most impressive feature of the new Junior is how much sharper it looks in person than it ever did in the initial design renderings and prototype glimpses. 

Crucially, though, you must back that exterior beauty up with interior quality, because that is, after all, where we spend our time regardless of the shape or size of the vehicle we buy. If the cabin doesn’t feel the way you expect it should, you’re going to be let down. Pleasingly, there’s plenty to like about the cabin. 

Quality graphics punctuate the 10.25-inch instrument cluster, which you view through the meaty steering wheel that blends sportiness and usefulness in equal measure. The sweeping design of the dash, driver-focused 10.25-inch screen and centre stack, and cloverleaf AC vents all look the part, and the seats are comfortable once adjusted into position too. Importantly, you get the ‘Spiga’ seats standard, which are optional in other markets. 

My position on brand rationalisation has always been a vexed one. Use Maserati for example – is a buyer in that segment testing a Fiat 500 to know that some of the switchgear is shared? Probably not. Is it therefore an issue that we know it’s the case? Maybe not for the buyer either. As such, it may not matter than the Alfa – which is supposed to be more premium – shares some commonality with the likes of Fiat 600e or Jeep Avenger; vehicles that are built more to a price than we would expect an Alfa to be.

If we were to be critical, we’d like more in the way of soft-touch surfaces – which deliver a sense of premium ambience – and more bespoke switchgear that isn’t shared across multiple other Stellantis platforms. The only other cabin negative is the seat space in the rear.

We wedged three people and way more luggage than you’d usually carry into our tester at launch, and if our back-seat occupants weren’t as nimble and lean as they were, we would have had some comfort issues. The back seat remains tight in terms of leg room, even behind front-seat occupants of average height. 

Interestingly, though, the boot offers 415 litres of storage, which Alfa claims is best in segment, and will be useful for family buyers or those of you who enjoy long road trips. Drop the 60:40 second row – which we did with the 40 side – and you can open that space up to a maximum of 1280L, which is again highly useful. 

The driving experience is a good one. It’s not easy to make an SUV feel genuinely sporty in the vein of the great sports cars, but Alfa Romeo has made a very good fist of it. Don’t expect the Junior to drive like the Junior of old – that’s a bridge too far – and you won’t be disappointed.

If the sports car was designed for the no-compromise driver who didn’t care about cupholders and boot space, then the modern SUV is designed for the daily driver wanting to have some fun outside of work hours, and the Junior is very good at that.

Let loose to inject their own sporting DNA then, Alfa Romeo engineers got to work tuning the Stellantis group chassis, tightening up torsional rigidity, and fitting firmer anti-roll bars. The Hybrid shares a platform with Fiat, Jeep and Peugeot, but there’s a connection between driver and SUV that will put a smile on the face of an Alfa fan.

Will the target market care about how sporting the Junior feels? Probably not, and it’s unrealistic to expect a compact crossover SUV to drive like a Mazda MX-5 anyway, so the fact you can have some degree of fun when you get that three-cylinder buzzing is reward enough. There’s a sharpness to the steering response, composure to the body control, and engagement between driver and vehicle that mean it’s fun to drive on any road. 

It’s not rocketship fast, but it will get moving swiftly enough, and also negotiate an overtake on the motorway with ease. In the hectic hurly-burly of Spanish road traffic, where everyone is keen to get cracking, the Junior Hybrid kept pace with ease. Really stand on the pedal rolling onto a motorway and it gets up to the 120km/h limit without any thrashing or screaming from beneath the bonnet. Mild hybrid it might be, but the electric assistance adds a decent punch when it kicks in, such that you’re thankful for it. 

Beyond that, the cabin is quiet at speed, the Junior Hybrid rides with composure and handles uneven surfaces nicely, and is comfortable for a longer motorway blast. That means it is capable of doing what you need to do day-to-day, while also looking the part, which plays back into the style and substance narrative. 

The 2025 Alfa Romeo Junior is an impressive compact SUV, and in mild-hybrid form it makes the most sense for the most Aussie buyers. Whether it can be the sales success we would love to see it become remains to be seen. 

Trent Nikolic has been road testing and writing about cars for almost 20 years. He’s been at CarAdvice/Drive since 2014 and has been a motoring editor at the NRMA, Overlander 4WD Magazine, Hot4s and Auto Salon Magazine.

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