Alfa Romeo Junior Review 2025

There’s no escaping the fact that while sales of electric cars are growing, they’re doing so at a lower rate than governments and car manufacturers hoped they would, forcing adjustments in product planning to ensure new designs can still accommodate combustion engines. One of the latest is this hybridised compact SUV — find out how good it is in our full Alfa Romeo Junior review.

While not one of the all-time greats, either among Alfas or electric cars, the Alfa Romeo Junior Elettrica shows plenty of promise, with a good driving range for a car of this type and appealing driving dynamics.

By swapping out the fully electric drive system and installing a petrol-electric mild hybrid alternative in its place, Alfa has retained the Junior’s qualities but in a more affordable package. The Junior Ibrida — that’s ‘hybrid’ in Italian — is also six grand cheaper than its electric sibling.

Alternatives to the Alfa include the very closely related Fiat 600 and Jeep Avenger which are built alongside it in Poland. Using near identical underpinnings, although manufactured elsewhere, are the Peugeot 2008 and Vauxhall Mokka.

Where the Junior Ibrida faces serious competition in terms of driving enjoyment comes in the shape of the Ford Puma, though it has a far broader range of mild hybrid models to choose from.

Naturally you lose out on some of the tax benefits and with 136PS to the front wheels the Alfa Romeo Junior Ibrida isn’t as powerful as the Elettrica either. But near-60mpg economy isn’t to be sniffed at and the Junior is still fun to drive with mild hybrid power, helped in no small part by a weight saving of more than 200kg compared with the electric version.

For the time being Alfa Romeo Junior Ibrida is being offered in just one variant, so customer choice comes down to colours, a selection of alloy wheel designs and a few option packs. Of these it’s the £4100 Sport Pack that stands out, giving you a pair of racing-style bucket seats and wrapping much of the cabin in Alcantara faux suede. It’s a hefty price to pay but no small SUV feels quite as special.

The Alfa Romeo Junior Ibrida retains most of the Elettrica’s foibles of course, from its tightly-packaged rear seats to a slightly unresponsive infotainment screen, but the good comfortably outweighs the bad. This is a small SUV that feels mature yet is fun to drive, is frugal and refined, plus it has just enough sporting appeal to justify its Alfa Romeo badges, all at a competitive price.

Small SUVs aren’t known for being great-handling cars, with most customers quite rightly prioritising everyday usability over B-road fun — but the Alfa Romeo Junior is one of only a handful that feels set up for more than just basic driving duties.

Alfa’s engineers have been able to tweak the suspension and anti-roll bars and stiffen the structure compared with the Fiat 600 and Jeep Avenger riding on the same underpinnings, with the result being a more responsive and engaging car.

It doesn’t have the sharpness and apex-hunting steering response of a Ford Puma but it also doesn’t have that car’s sometimes grating hyperactivity or overly firm ride. The Alfa’s a more mature package that still gives something back to the driver, through fluid handling and a surprisingly adjustable balance, without ever feeling nervous.

Away from twisty roads it’s still good. The ride is firm enough to avoid floatiness but rounds-off the worst bumps, while the steering has just a hint of heft for motorway stability but not so heavy that town work gets tiring.

The only two real irritations are the slightly grabby brakes — they’re fine when using them harder from higher speeds, but feel a little sharp used gently around town. Poor over-the-shoulder visibility from the thick rear pillars caused us gripes, too — they make angled junctions and lane-changes more fraught than they ought to be.

Powering the Alfa Romeo Junior Ibrida is the tried-and-tested turbocharged 1.2-litre, three-cylinder petrol engine, assisted by a 48-volt mild hybrid system, driving the front wheels through a six-speed dual-clutch automatic gearbox.

Alfa says it’s almost ‘more of a full hybrid’ because of how often it can run on EV power alone — as much as 60% in town — though you can think of it as being more like an older Toyota Prius. It crawls along happily enough in EV mode in traffic, when reversing, or coasting off-throttle, but not driving the car at high speeds. Its battery capacity is just 0.9kWh.

In the Junior it makes 136PS and 230Nm of torque — 0-62mph comes up in 8.9 seconds and top speed is 128mph. Hardly searing, but not bad, aided by a kerb weight that seems modest by 2025 standards, at 1230kg. For reference, the Alfa Romeo Junior Elettrica tips the scales some 240kg heavier.

Transition between the petrol and electric driving isn’t as smooth as those old Priuses used to be — it’s readily apparent when the engine kicks in and out, though the engine does spend a surprising amount of time off if you’re driving smoothly.

Shift the DNA driving mode switch to Dynamic and the engine remains on all the time — it’s actually smoother this way, the electric motor assisting and providing useful braking regeneration, but you lose stop-start fuel-saving in urban traffic.

Mild hybrid operation aside, refinement is good, with wind and road noise more apparent than the engine in most situations. Arguably too much so on a twisty road for a car wearing an Alfa badge — it’d be nice to hear a more sporty engine note from the three-cylinder.

While the gearshifts are snappier than in other cars using this setup, there’s still not huge satisfaction to be gleaned from going up and down the gearbox manually. Performance is just brisk enough to justify Alfa’s sporty billing, feeling especially keen at lower speeds but having enough punch for motorway overtaking.

The Alfa Romeo Junior doesn’t yet have a crash-test safety rating from Euro NCAP, though the three stars scored by the Jeep Avenger on the same underpinnings was hardly glowing.

It scored decently enough in the crash-testing itself but had lower ratings for vulnerable road user protection and safety assist systems.

Alfa Romeo does fit automatic emergency braking with vulnerable road user detection as standard, but you’ll need to dip into the £2200 Technology Pack for traffic sign recognition and to give the standard-fit adaptive cruise control lane centring and traffic jam assist functions.

If you’re not keen on some of the assistance features, Alfa makes it moderately easy to turn them off with a physical shortcut button between the central air vents, followed by a few screen prods can turn off the various features.

When it comes to space for front seat passengers and for luggage, the Alfa Romeo Junior is good. Decent seat and wheel adjustment means finding an agreeable driving position is easy enough and in models with the optional Sabelt bucket seats you also feel a little less perched.

Rear seat space depends on how tall front and rear seat passengers are. A Junior full of people no taller than this writer’s 5ft 8in would be just fine, but put someone 6ft tall in either the front or rear seat and space becomes tight.

Put six-footers behind one another and the rear seat passenger will have their knees by their ears — or twisted like a pretzel in a car with the less space-efficient Sabelt front sports seats. The rear cabin is also dark thanks to the thick roof pillars, though marginal rear seat space and gloomy back seats are not an Alfa-specific issue.

With the rear seats in use, the Alfa Romeo Junior Ibrida’s boot offers 415 litres of volume, slightly up on the 400 litres of the Elettrica models. It’s a little shy of the 434 litres you get in the closely related Peugeot 2008 and much further behind the generous 456 litres of a Ford Puma, but by no means bad.

Fold the rear seats over and space in the Ibrida expands to 1280 litres, maintaining that 15-litre advantage over the Elettrica versions, although the Peugeot 2008 offers 1467 litres of space in this configuration. The Alfa does trump the Ford in this regard, though — fold the Puma’s rear seats over and you only have 1216 litres available.

It’s not difficult to find hard textured plastics in the Alfa Romeo Junior, as most of the dashboard and door trims are made from the stuff. Compared with a MINI Aceman’s fabrics or a Peugeot 2008’s varied materials it doesn’t make the best first impression but at least everything felt well-assembled.

Matters are improved with the optional Sport Pack, whose Sabelt bucket seats are the best ones you’ll find in a small SUV by a country mile. They look and feel fabulous and really hold you in place in corners. Sport Pack cars also get Alcantara faux suede trim panels replacing some of the artificial leather and neoprene-style trim in the regular cars, which gives the cabin a lift.

The overall design is a little busy but has a traditional driver-focused feel, with a dual hooded binnacle around the 10.25-inch driver display, a dash angled towards the driver, and plenty of physical controls. There are actual buttons and switches for operating the climate control, driving modes, audio volume and other minor functions. It’s all quite refreshing.

The Alfa Romeo Junior’s slimline 10.25-inch display gets off to a good start. It’s angled towards the driver, has a modern-looking white on black interface and isn’t massive or distracting in your peripheral vision. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are both standard, which are the bare minimum for a passing grade in a modern infotainment system.

Unfortunately, the rest of it is average. Graphics that look good at a standstill don’t stand out when you’re on the move, requiring longer-than-ideal glances to find the function you’re after. When you do find them, it’s a little slow to respond to inputs, while the navigation — part of the Technology Pack — can be a bit slow and confusing. Stick to smartphone mirroring, minimising your interaction with the native system, and you’ll be happier.

On list price alone the Alfa Romeo Junior Ibrida looks competitive. At £27,895 it’s not just £6000 cheaper than a Junior Elettrica, it undercuts the similarly-propelled Peugeot 2008 Hybrid by around £3000, as well as being cheaper than a hybrid Nissan Juke by more than a grand.

It’s more expensive than the Jeep Avenger and Fiat 600 Hybrids that are near-identical to the Alfa under the bodywork, but it’s a better car to drive than either.

It’s easy to send that list price skyrocketing if you want the highly desirable Sabelt bucket seats and an Alcantara-covered interior, which are part of the £4100 Sport Pack. If you want more than just rear parking sensors, you can only get a rear-view camera and front and side sensors as part of the £2200 Technology Pack. At over £34,000 with those two ticked, the Junior Ibrida doesn’t seem such great value.

A WLTP Combined cycle return of 58.9mpg from the Alfa Romeo Junior Ibrida’s mild hybrid system is in the same ballpark as other Stellantis group cars with this petrol-electric setup. Like those it should be respectably frugal in the real world too, with figures in the 50mpg range being pretty easy to achieve.

Its 109g/km CO2 figure keeps first-year VED car tax down to £390 and with prices well under the £40,000 mark, there’s no nasty surcharge in subsequent years, so from year two onwards you’re looking at £195 a year at 2025/26 rates.

Company car drivers will still want the Elettrica version — the Ibrida’s 27% Benefit-in-Kind (BiK) taxation levels aren’t the worst you’ll find but they still make it thousands more expensive per year than a Junior Elettrica.

There’s only one nameless Alfa Romeo Junior Ibrida specification which comes as standard with 17-inch alloy wheels, climate control, rear parking sensors, steering wheel-mounted gear-change paddle shifters, keyless start-stop, a 10.25-inch driver display and 10.25-inch multimedia touchscreen, a four-speaker audio system , adaptive cruise control plus and front and rear LED lights.

Option packs are where you’ll find most things missing from the standard kit. The £4100 Sport Pack is most enticing and most expensive, bringing with it those Sabelt seats, sports pedals, a sports steering wheel, a sport styling kit and dark-tinted rear windows.

A further £2200 gets the Technology Pack adding LED matrix headlamps, an integrated navigation system, a six-speaker audio, additional front and side parking sensors plus a reversing camera among other features.

A £2000 Premium Pack has similar equipment to the Sport Pack but gets less impressive seats. If you want 18-inch alloy wheels, there are two optional designs, priced at £660.