hello and welcome to episode four now of my alfa romeo giulia veloce video
diary series and today i'm gonna be talking about a whole new model
of julia kind of and also a recent trip to the dealership for my veloce but first the new model
it's called the estrema and it's basically what it is a trim level on the julia range
it's the highest trim level that you can now get underneath the quadrifoglio model and to
find out what it's like and whether it's worth your money i went to the international press
launch in switzerland to drive the car and see what it's about and what you're about to see
now is my very very short video review of it and you'll see why it's short when the tape starts
so welcome to switzerland and the alpha romeo julia estrema as you can see
from the badge just here there we go so it tells you it leaves you with no doubt that this in this
drummer looking at it from the outside there's the badge that tells you it's in this drummer there's
unique wheels these are 19-inch wheels on this car you get 21-inch wheels if it's
the stelvio um you'll also see the little carbon detailing around here on the mirror
and there's a few other pieces as well but most of them are evident from
the interior where you can see more carbon down there on the center console and there's carbon
up here as well so lots of lovely carbon and then these seats which are actually really nice
they're leather and alcantara you can't get these seats on any other julia from what we've been told
we haven't got pricing yet hopefully it's going to appear on the screen now once we do get it
but yeah it's basically a simplification of the trim lineup for the julia and this
below the quadrifoglio is the best the most expensive julia that you can get so in summary
unique wheels unique cabin with those leather and alcantara seats you've got the little carbon
inserts you've got the australia badges in black you've also got plenty of option packs you've got
the driver assistance pack you've got the harman kardon sound system and honestly
that's largely it in terms of cosmetics it's basically a fully tricked up julia
that doesn't happen to be a quadrifoglio um we'll take it for a drive now probably be quite quick
because as i said it's very very similar but at least you can get an idea of what it's like and
whether this might be the julia spec that you want to get when it arrives in the uk
so i've got to be honest driving the s trimmer today there isn't a huge amount of difference
to a julia veloce with the adaptive dampers fitted and you obviously can't get the julia
veloce with the adaptive dampers now so if you want them this is the model you need to get
and what they allow you to do is basically have it in normal mode and soft dampers or you can put
it in the sportier mode and then get the firmer dampers or turn it down again into soft amps which
i think a lot of people will want to do weirdly though you can't have it in normal mode and firm
it up but not the end of the world they still do the job that said that job it's not much different
at all anything than my julia veloce with the passive dampers because that rides brilliantly
it handles really nicely and this it does both of those things as well but you don't need to have
the adaptive dampers in my opinion because it still works perfectly well aside from that
the engine is the same 280 horsepower 2 litre petrol gearboxes to say nice paddles here but
then we mustn't lose sight of the fact that this is just a very good car full stop anyway
it handles well it rides well it's just not that much different from a julia veloce so if
you were expecting that you could be a little bit disappointed but still it's a good car
so there you go i told you it would be a very
short review and that was just because there wasn't that much to talk about it actually was
an alfa romeo julia veloce with adaptive dampers that's what it drove like and the cosmetic changes
were also pretty minor even if i did like the nice new seats um the bottom line from that is if you
really want the adaptive dampers then you need to get the estrema now or of course the quadrifoglio
but if you can do without them and that's what i would do then get the julia veloce and spend
the extra money that you'd saved on a nice italian road trip so that's the astrema out the way what i
want to talk about now is my recent trip to thames alfa romeo service center in slough because there
are a couple of things that i wanted them to look at and see if they could fix and that was the wind
noise from around the wing mirror and this kind of area the a-pillar and also the sat nav just
getting lost when i'm trying to do a journey and then myself getting lost the bad news is
they didn't or they couldn't do anything about the wind noise that it was normal for the julia
so that basically for me means that it's not as good in terms of refinement as a c-class or
a 3-series or an a4 which is a bit of a shame but the good news is that the sat-nav is now fixed so
i can do a long journey i can drive to work and it won't suddenly lose the position and leave
me high and dry wondering where the hell i am so that's now fixed the software was updated so it's
clearly running on all the software and that fixed the problem so if you're having that problem get
the dealer to update the software and it should hopefully fix it i've also got to say the thames
alfred mayo were great they were really helpful they were really efficient and that was before
they knew i was a journalist as well so top marked to thames so that's about it for this month's
update um i hope it would be a little bit longer but the review of the astrema was quite short so
not that long but next month it will be a big video because i'm going to compare this
giulia veloce to an alfa romeo julia quadrifoglio it's a video i wanted to do since i got this car
it should be really interesting to see what the differences are in the real world
and let you have a proper comparison of both cars so that'll be really good keep an eye out
for that and in the meantime make sure you check out the written articles on parkers dot co dot uk
you