Every now and then, it's important to remember some Alfa Romeos
In the 1980s, Toby Keel's dad somehow got the keys to an Alfa Romeo GTV as his company car: a gorgeous rocket that was just about usable as a family car. So how does it compare to Alfa's modern equivalent, the Junior Elletrica Veloce?
Don’t judge me, but I remember the numberplates of a lot of my old cars. It’s partly because I like cars, and partly because I have a brain that loves retaining useless information. The kind of brain that remembers Crystal Palace players from the 1980s but not which day the wheelie bin goes out. You may well have one of these brains too.
Thus, I remember the numberplate on my 1983 Triumph Acclaim, a bizarre-looking mini-saloon which had a boot as long as its bonnet, and so looked like a cack-brown hat. I remember the one on my Austin Maestro Vanden Plas, which I bought for £150 with a plate that ended in the letters JON, which turned out to be by far the most valuable thing about the car. And I remember the numberplate of a Golf TDI that I eventually sold with a mileage so high that only an astronaut or a minicab driver could have seen such numbers reel by.
The one I remember best, though, is one that belonged to my dad’s first Alfa: FGF 10X.
An Alfetta GTV 2000 in gun-metal grey, it was just exquisitely, heart-stoppingly, pretty — and exquisitely, heart-stoppingly, great to drive. Not that I, aged five, had much of a chance to do any more than sit in the back seats. It was cramped, uncomfortable, and with windows that only wound down a crack — and that was assuming you could work the bizarre, circular, handle-less winder.
Almost all the Alfa Romeo GTVs of the 1970s and 1980s rusted to oblivion within a decade. This is a VERY rare survivor.
But my god, how we loved that car. Dad’s job gave him few perks, but his boss had a soft-spot for him — and a hearty respect for anyone gutsy enough to point out that a nearly-new blazing Italian sports coupé could be bought as a company car for the same price as brand-new Ford Cortina.
The other perk he got was a company fuel card that covered all his mileage, and so most weekends our entertainment would be whooping with delight as we headed out of south-London and onto the B-roads of Surrey, Kent and Sussex.
'Mamma Mia!' — I can't believe Abba stole their song title from this Alfa Romeo advert.
In the summer holidays, we never flew anywhere: it was always the ferry to Calais, and from there more thousands of miles across the Continent. For all its dash and charm, it was surprisingly practical as a grand tourer: one year, after going a bit crazy at the hypermarché near our rented gîte in St Jean de Luz, we managed to squeeze in four people, two weeks’ luggage, a couple of cases of wine (this was 1983, and the claret everywhere was phenomenal) and — most improbably of all — a dismantled BMX bike. No roof rack, no trailer… and not really much of a view out of the back windscreen either. But we didn’t care: we loved the GTV.
And we weren’t alone in our love. Everywhere we went I remember appreciative glances and thumbs-ups, not least from the Italian policeman we accidentally sped past on the far side of the Mont Blanc tunnel. Even the producers of the James Bond films loved our GTV: it had a starring role in Octopussy, during a car chase in which 007 commandeers the car, and easily outpaces a string of BMWs and Mercedes equivalents while saving the world.
Was it perfect? God no, not if you ask dad at least. The gear change was so stiff that he had a semi-permanent sore shoulder. The driving position was so awkward — and slightly angled off to one side — that dad would emerge utterly exhausted after long trips. And while nobody cared about MPG back then, I doubt it got much more than 20 miles to the gallon.
It was lunacy. But God, how we loved that lunacy. We begged dad to get another when time came to change it, but — curse-me-and-my-growing-legs — a car that had been big enough for an eight-year-old and a five-year-old simply couldn’t fit an 11-year-old and an eight-year-old, even when we took out the BMXs and cheap French wine. Dad did get another Alfa, but… it wasn’t a GTV. It was a Giulietta, and looked more like a Triumph Acclaim than an Alfa.
Oh, sure, we had leg room, and a proper boot, and electric windows (that last bit actually was pretty exciting). But when you trade in your James-Bond-approved car for what looks like a giant metal hat, a part of you dies inside.
Alfa made several models of the GTV between 1967 and 2005, but they don’t any more, and — unlike their corporate stablemates elsewhere in Stellantis car manufacturing empire — they haven’t resurrected this iconic name to bestow it on a less emotive tonne of metal. One name they have resurrected, though, is the Junior, which was used on the smaller versions of their 1960s and early 1970s coupés: Alfa’s latest baby is the Alfa Romeo Junior Elettrica, and I tried one out full of hope that it would retain some of that Italian spirit.
First things first: the new Junior isn’t a bad-looking car, but it’s not a 1970s coupé. Just as once-iconic designs like the Ford Puma and Ford Capri have been turned into SUV-lites, the same fate has befallen the Junior Elletrica. Thankfully, though, to nothing like the same extent.
Last year I wrote about how the bland DS-branded cars of today are something of a slap in the face to the original, genuinely-iconic Citroën DS design. The same does apply to this Alfa, but the gap between old and new is far smaller.
For starters, the Italian company’s 1970s designs were nothing like as outlandish as the original DS, which looked like it had been lifted from an episode of The Jetsons. They were iterations on existing coupés, beautiful, but not shocking. And Alfa’s modern designers have loaded just enough personality and flair into the Junior Elletrica to make it feel special: the arches and spoilers, the sharp-looking front headlights, the triangular Alfa grill, the stunningly cool quadrifoglio alloys. It’s still a fish that swims with the shoal, but it’s just about different enough that you won’t end up walking around car parks wondering which of the identikit metal boxes is yours. In 2026, that’s about as good as it gets for those not working with a six-figure budget.
Budget is another factor in the equation, too. This is very much a car that can come in below the £40,000 luxury car tax threshold — and will even do so fully-loaded, if you can wait for April 1 when that limit rises to £50,000.
And in all practical senses, it’s unimaginably better than a 1980s GTV. It seats five people in grand comfort. It has decent luggage space, a great driving position, and can still hit 60mph in less than six seconds, all while costing around 4p a mile in electricity. It’s selling like hot cakes and earning great reviews. I can see why. I’d bite your hand off to have one sitting outside my house.
But will the mere sight of it raise your pulse, like dad’s GTV? Would James Bond commandeer one while staving off the next world war? And will your kids still remember the number plate in 40 years’ time? I think we both know the answer to that.
On The Road: Alfa Romeo Junior Elletrica Veloce
0-60mph: 5.9 seconds
Top speed: 124 mph
Battery: 54 kWh
Range: 200-208 WLTP
