| First Drive | Balocco, Italy | Alfa Romeo Mito QV |
Key Facts
Model tested: Alfa Romeo Mito Quadrifoglio Verde TCT
Pricing: from £20,120
Engine: 1.4-litre four-cylinder turbocharged petrol
Transmission: six-speed dual-clutch automatic, front-wheel drive
Body style: three-door hatchback
Rivals: Ford Fiesta ST, Kia pro_cee'd GT, SEAT Ibiza Cupra
CO2 emissions: 124g/km
Combined economy: 52.3mpg
Top speed: 136mph
0-62mph: 7.3 seconds
Power: 170hp at 5,500rpm
Torque: 230Nm at 2,500rpm (250Nm at 2,500rpm in Dynamic mode)
In the Metal: 
The Alfa Romeo MiTo has always been a cute enough thing and the Quadrifoglio Verde treatment sees some improvements over the old Cloverleaf model. First of all, the QV is based on the facelifted MiTo that emerged last year, featuring the slightly amended front grille, tweaked headlights and a new interior. The QV further adds a rear boot spoiler, twin exhaust pipes under a sports bumper, a burnished finish for the mirror caps, front grille, door handles and light cluster frames, plus 17-inch alloys with red brake callipers peeping out. There's also a natty matte body finish, Magnesio Grey, which helps the MiTo look purposeful.
Inside are plenty of QV logos and badges, plus a leather sports steering wheel, more cow hide on the handbrake lever and the gear lever gaiter, and new instruments with the QV emblem in the middle. You also get sports seats, with optional leather or Sabelt carbon fibre shell buckets available, and the dash top has a carbon-look finish. Which we'd be quite happy to leave, if we're honest, and there are some nasty, cheap-looking and feeling plastics easily located in the front that are a long, long way from premium. Plus, the steering wheel is needlessly gargantuan - it doesn't exactly convey sporting intent before the off.
Driving it:
If you're an 'Alfisti', you're probably going to be disappointed to see that the 2014 1.4-litre turbo QV develops exactly the same 170hp headline power figure as the 2012 Cloverleaf. It also has precisely the same torque characteristics. However, this is a new MultiAir engine that is cleaner and more frugal than before, said to be 11 per cent better on CO
2 at 124g/km and with a 10 per cent better combined economy figure of 52.3mpg, plus its Euro 6 compliant. And while top speed has not changed from 136mph, the 0-62mph time has dropped by 0.2 seconds to 7.3 seconds.
The chief factor in this is a dual-clutch auto TCT gearbox with wheel-mounted paddle shifts, as seen in the 4C, perhaps the biggest mechanical change to the QV's arsenal. It promises quicker shift times and it's not bad, but then it's also not as polished as the Volkswagen DSG system, for example, and you end up lamenting the passing of a manual transmission. The QV also boasts Brembo brakes with four-pot front callipers, which promise plenty of stopping power, but in our view the pay-off for this is bizarre pedal feel. There's a good inch of dead, spongy travel under initial operation and then the discs feel grabby after that. They work better on track or under hard loads, but modulating them on a day-to-day basis will undoubtedly prove frustrating.
The engine is muscular and propels the 1,170kg MiTo along at a fair old lick, with good, linear power delivery. Yet it's uninspiring. There's no real reward in revving it out to the modest 6,000rpm redline and it never sounds anything but wheezy and gruff. That said, the QV handles its power well, minimising torque- and understeer, and remaining rock steady at three-figure speeds. The chassis underneath the electronics is good but the fact you can't ever turn the electronic aids fully off was quickly glossed over in the presentations. So even if you stick the car in Dynamic from its DNA settings - which gives sharper throttle response, weightier steering and firmer damping from the Alfa Adaptive Suspension - you're still being looked after. The steering is utterly numb through that massive rim, full driver interactivity is robbed via the ESP and as a result it's hard to think of a time the QV was ever putting a smile on our faces; perhaps the most damning admission in terms of the car's supposed appeal.
What you get for your Money:
If it was priced more keenly, it might make sense in a hugely competitive market. But the MiTo QV will start from £20,120 - a huge amount for a car that's geriatric, slower and less entertaining than some of the exceptional metal out there; crikey, that's getting close to Focus ST money. OK, it loads in quite a lot of kit (the TCT 'box, Brembo brakes, a Uconnect five-inch touchscreen with Bluetooth, USB, MP3 compatibility and Voice Control, Alfa Adaptive Suspension and sporty QV addenda here and there), but the MiTo has been around since 2008 and its cabin is particularly dated, the recent refresh hardly making it cutting edge. We can already think of three or four competitor cars that are better value and more fun to drive, and that's before you even consider that there'll be a new Volkswagen Polo GTI in 2015.
Worth Noting
You might think you're being clever by using a limited knowledge of Italian to translate 'Quadrifoglio Verde' into the more recognisable 'Cloverleaf' branding that we know in our markets, but Alfa Romeo has taken the decision to go with the more romantic-sounding Italian naming convention in all countries, so all hot Alfas wearing the four-leafed clover will be QVs from now on.
Summary
As ever, we wanted to love a promising new Alfa such as the QV, but it's not that much evolved from the Cloverleaf model of 2010 and yet the cost has inflated to beyond the psychological barrier of £20,000. It looks good on the outside and has a competitive standard specification, but it's nowhere near special enough to justify the price premium and the interior is mediocre - and that's putting it politely. If his 'Grand Plan' for Alfa's revival goes ahead, the MiTo's time under Sergio Marchionne is drawing to a close and, as such, the QV merely feels like a badging exercise to shift some of the final cars out of showrooms. Shame; it could have been so much more.
