The Alfa Romeo Giulietta Isn’t Coming Back

We’ve got bad news for Alfa Romeo fans. On top of the company’s polarizing plans to remake the Giulia sedan as a crossover, the snorty Giulietta hatchback won’t be making a return. The Giulietta, which was axed globally in 2020, has become the latest victim of an SUV-crazy world, with Alfa Romeo focusing its efforts on the Junior and the next-generation Stelvio. According to the French outlet L’Argus, the automaker says it’s following the market and the market wants crossovers.

Pour One Out For The Hot Hatch With 8C Styling

The Giulietta nameplate hasn’t been offered in the US for decades, but for overseas customers, it most recently served on a sharply styled five-door hatchback. The Giulietta, which replaced the 147 as Alfa Romeo’s compact family hatchback, was a decidedly modern thing when it debuted in 2010, with a platform that made abundant use of high-strength steel and aluminum for rigidity and light weight. The bones were so robust that when Alfa Romeo became part of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (and later Stellantis), its parent company reused the architecture for the Dodge Dart and Chrysler 200.

But while the engineering underneath the Giulietta was impressive, most folks were captivated instead by its gorgeous styling. Arriving hot on the heels of the 8C Competizione, the Giulietta featured similar almond-shaped headlights and a mustachioed “trilobo” grille design that aped the supercar. Alfa Romeo also offered a Quadrifoglio Verde (shortened to QV) variant of the hatchback, giving it 240 horsepower courtesy of a 1.8-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine. The QV could hit 60 miles per hour in 6.0 seconds, putting the Giulietta in the same league as the Mk6 Volkswagen Golf R.

Related

Alfa Backing Off All-EV Strategy, Considering Junior For America

An Americanized Junior opens up some interesting possibilities for Stellantis in America.

The Tonale Will Serve As The Giulietta’s Replacement

Alfa Romeo considers the compact Tonale crossover to be the Giulietta’s spiritual replacement. Offered in the US with both mild-hybrid and plug-in hybrid powertrains, the Tonale is undeniably pretty, with three-element headlights that recall the polarizing Sprint Zagato and that fabulous Alfa mustache up front. Whether the automatic-only Tonale can live up to the Giulietta’s feisty reputation is a matter of opinion – we found the crossover to be somewhat endearing, but not nearly good enough to help the automaker stem the tide of low sales.

The Junior might also fill the Giulietta-shaped hole in some enthusiats’ hearts, thanks to its surprisingly powerful, all-electric Veloce model as well as its nimble proportions and front-drive-only powertrain layout. The Junior might even come to the US sometime, in both all-electric and “Ibrida” hybrid form. When that happens, we’ll be able to really suss out if Alfa’s crossover-intensive strategy is a good one.

Source: L’Argus via Carscoops