The Alfa Romeo Mito QV is a relaunch of the moderately popular Cloverleaf Mito, and has a big sister, the Giulietta. QV stands for whatever the Italian is for “green four-leafed clover”, so as its driver one is presumably meant to consider oneself lucky. I dare to imagine the driver of the bigger sister is luckier than the small one, which felt as fortunate as being left with the second-to-last shopping trolley in a supermarket car park.
This car can’t decide whether it wants to look cute (small, round edges) or butch (brushed steel, headlamps like narrowed eyes). So it looks neither, and in a charm contest with a Mini, would come a poor second. The cabin looks OK, but the seats deliver a weird driving posture: you’re too far away or too far forward. The steering is a bit premenstrual, at times wildly touchy, at others morose and unresponsive. (I’m allowed to say that because I’m a feminist. If Jeremy Clarkson said it, I would troll him. I know! Life isn’t fair.) This makes navigating slightly dishevelled country roads in the dark genuinely hairy.
And God, the noise; it claims 0 to 62 in 7.3 seconds, but I never got any sense of such acceleration, partly because it made such a fuss at the touch of the gas that it seemed mean to push it, like flogging a donkey. It was all gong and no dinner.
The 1.4 turbo engine left a neutral impression – neither “How does it manage to be so zingy?”, nor “What did it do with the turbo?” If I wouldn’t recommend it for rural driving, it was fine on a motorway. Dual-clutch transmission is supposed to offer the best of manual and automatic; the idea is to change gears without interrupting the power flow (stop me if you’ve heard all this), so avoiding that pause-for-breath that manual drivers find unnerving about automatics, yet automatic drivers get used to pretty fast. It does move smoothly, but that’s offset by the melodramatic resonance. It’s reliable, though – I never felt as though I might get into a lane-changing fix where I’d overestimated my own coolness and annoyed the person behind me.
City driving is just a bit blah in this, with little potential for showing off, either with the exterior or with the performance. It is what it is: a car capable of a certain amount, but that nobody would call enthusiastic.
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Alfa Romeo Mito QV
Price from £20,210 (as tested £25,020)
Top speed 136mph
Acceleration 0-62mph in 7.3 seconds
Combined fuel consumption 52.3mpg
CO2 emissions 124/km
Eco rating 7/10
Cool rating 5/10
