Like so many segment-straddlers before it, the Junior is difficult to pigeonhole into any one clear market category before you see it – and even then it’s not immediately obvious.
It bears emphasising, though, that it’s deceptively small, at just 4173mm bumper to bumper and 1505mm Tarmac to top – just 25mm taller than a Giulietta, don’cha know? Segmentation be damned: let’s call a spade a spade and recognise the Junior for what it really is: a family hatchback that’s had a growth spurt. In practice, it’s no more an SUV than it is a steamroller.
Striking with it, too. As the bellwether for a new design era at Alfa Romeo, the Junior ushers in a raft of distinctive and disruptive styling cues that nod to the brand’s heritage – clock the ‘scudetto’ grille, ‘telephono’ wheels and ‘coda tronca’ rear end – while looking ahead to the electrified, digitised era with all the clever air intake trickery and LED illuminations you’d expect.
However, without the Veloce’s 25mm lower ride height and arch-filling 20-inch alloys the cooking versions look less arresting. The distinctive boomerang rear lights have a hint of Maserati 3200 GT, but in profile and on its tall-profiled 18-inch wheels the Alfa could be mistaken for its Stellantis stablemate, the Peugeot e-2008.
Perhaps that’s hardly surprising when you consider the Junior is spun off the same eCMP platform as the Pug (and the Vauxhall Mokka, Citroen e-C3, Jeep Avenger, DS 3 Crossback and, well, you get the picture). Alfa claims to have given the underpinnings a sprinkling of Italian brio, but essentially its an identical strut front suspension and torsion beam rear axle, while power is provided by the now ubiquitous front-mounted 154bhp electric motor and 54kWh battery.
For the range-topping Veloce there’s a bespoke 278bhp motor, a 25mm lower ride height, revised dampers, thicker anti-roll bars and four-pot calipers for the larger 380mm front brakes. However, the standard car’s battery is carried over unchanged. Either way, the extras add an extra 15kg to the total kerbweight, taking it to 1560kg. Alfa claims this makes the Veloce around 200kg lighter than rivals, but while those compeitors offer similar performane they are also from the class above and feature bigger batteries.
