The Alfa Romeo Junior and the ups and downs of modern automotive brand building

It’s rare to approach a new car with high expectations only to have them firmly suppressed. Such is the lot of the Alfa Romeo Junior, the new compact all-electric model from the storied Italian marque that now finds itself sitting in the cheap seats of Stellantis’s creaking theatre of brands. That’s not to say the Junior is in itself cheap – far from it – but the company definitely feels like it has a restricted view when compared to some of the more favoured members of the larger team.

The Junior began life as the Milano, a more appropriate name perhaps for a city-orientated car, but one that was nixed by no less than the Italian government, who forbade the Polish-made EV from bearing the name of an Italian city. Now it’s the Junior, a name that means a great deal to the Alfisti and therefore cannot help but coming up slightly short. Illustrated here with the flagship Veloce model, we tested the Junior Speciale.

The model encapsulates today’s platform-based approach to volume car-making. The Junior sits on Stellantis's electrified Common Modular Platform (e-CMP), an incredibly flexible piece of engineering designed in collaboration with Chinese manufacturer Dongfeng. CMP and e-CMP underpin a staggering number of different vehicles, including the Citroen e-C4, DS 3 Crossback, Opel Mokka-e, Peugeot e-208, Fiat and Abarth 600e, and Jeep Avenger EV, and that's just the pure electric models from Stellantis.

Although modern platforms are massively flexible, there are still elements of proportions, cabin architecture and internal systems that are harder to disguise. In pictures, the Alfa has a snub, compact tidiness, with kicked up rear haunches, big wheelarches and pitched-forward stance. In reality, the Junior is larger than it looks on the page; in the metal, the car feels stout and a little bloated.

There’s no denying the unique Alfa identifiers such as the front grille/badge, the bold wheel design and the front and rear light clusters. But these tacked on, rather than an integral part of a cohesive design, brand flair added as a differentiator, not a defining core of an identity.

That feeling carries on inside, where you’ll find a start button raised up on a prominent but plasticky bit of trim, studiously ‘racy’ contrasting seatbelt colours and a sculptural, heritage-focused instrument cowling that simply sits around a square digital screen inside. Ergonomically, the Junior is sound rather than intuitively perfect or even idiosyncratically awful, as many iconic Italian cars tended to be. The ‘Alfa Romeo’-ness of it all is nothing but a checklist.

Happily, the Junior is a bit more invigorating to drive. In Speciale trim it’s no screaming performer – 62mph comes up in 9 seconds and top speed is 93mph – but the balance, poise and steering all transcend the usual EV bugbear of having to cart around so much weight. That’s partly due to the relatively small 54kWh battery, the downside of which is a range of just 208 miles for the Veloce and 255 miles for the Speciale.

With all that said, the Junior is doing good numbers for Alfa, which recently updated the car for the 2026 model year. In brief, this means more options, with two- and four-wheel drive hybrids alongside the 100% electric car. There are already plenty of options – and standard equipment – that set the Junior apart from a more run-of-the-mill compact SUV, including driver’s massage seat and USB sockets all round (with the addition of the Techno Pack – as fitted to the test car).

A disappointment? Perhaps a little. For some, the Junior represents the best possible expression of the brand given the constraints within which it finds itself operating. But in truth, Alfa has always been a battler, making a whole host of brilliant but flawed cars despite myriad economic challenges. While the Junior is par for the course for a modern EV, it definitely feels like more character is available to unlock.

Alfa Romeo Junior Speciale, from £35,695, as tested £ 38,245