Alfa Romeo Junior Ibrida 2025 review: Hybrid power adds an extra string to crossover's bow
Don’t focus too much on all the Peugeot-Citroen switchgear
You don’t need to be fluent in Italian to work out that the word “Ibrida”, when used as a suffix for the Alfa Romeo Junior crossover, means this is the hybrid variant. It joins the pure-electric versions we tested last year, and the idea is that it may to tempt some of the people who might be interested in Alfa’s most affordable model but aren’t quite ready to make the leap to a full EV just yet.
And, as it ever seems to be for this storied Italian company that has long flirted with financial oblivion, the Junior is a product pivotal to Alfa’s ongoing existence. If the company can’t shift a decent number of this compact crossover — a category that includes the likes of the Nissan Juke and Ford Puma, which sell like the hot cakes — then there are serious question marks over the Milanese outfit’s ability to keep its head above water in the medium and long terms.
Good news for “Alfisti” (that’s people who love Alfa Romeo), then: since the Junior was announced, Alfa has already received 30,000 orders for it across 38 countries. That’s a decent initial take-up and the arrival of the Ibrida is only going to strengthen the appeal of the crossover.
When the baby Alfa was first announced (actually as the “Milano”, but a government official blocked the company from using that name and it had to be changed last minute) the first pictures of it didn’t do the styling much justice. But, having come to terms with the way it looks, it has to be said the exterior of the Junior can now be deemed a success — especially when seen in the metal.
At just shy of 4.2 metres long, it’s not a physically huge car yet the Alfa Romeo has plenty of presence as you walk up to it.
The Ibrida looks barely any different to the electric models already in existence, save principally for the addition of some exhaust pipes peeking out of the right-hand side of its rear bumper.
This means the triple-signature headlights — which reference the Alfa Romeo SZ of the late 1980s and early ‘90s, and which link the Junior with the rest of Alfa’s current product range — are retained, as is the shield-shaped grille which comes with one of two different emblems: either the words “Alfa Romeo” in a historic script, or with the company’s snake-sporting logo.
At the back of the Junior, there are more triple lamps to balance out the front, while the hoop shape for the full-width light bar could be said to hark back to any number of Alfas, but we think if you focus on the boot shape of the classic Mk1 Alfasud hatch of the 1970s then you’ll see the inspiration for the crossover’s tailgate detail.
Anyway, it’s a nice-looking car on the outside, and when you clamber inside there are more good points. It has to be said that there are also quite a few negatives, though.
The things we like are the attractive 10.25in instrument cluster, complete with Alfa’s sharp graphics and, in the Ibrida, a rev counter that the electric Juniors don’t get.
There’s also a good-sized steering wheel, a bit of scalloping to the shape of the passenger-side dashboard, “cloverleaf” air vents with Alfa’s little snake emblem on their centres, and very comfortable seats.
Yet, here, Alfa does something incredibly Alfa that really marks the Junior Ibrida out in the B-segment crossover market. The standard seats, nice as they may be, don’t offer a huge amount of support, so there’s an upgrade to more sculpted Spiga pews, available as an option … for a really hefty £2,000 extra.
More astonishing, though, is the range-topping seat option. In this 134bhp hybrid crossover with a sub-£30,000 price tag and a focus on being safe, family-friendly transport on a budget, you can option up full Sabelt sports seats for an astounding £4,100. That means this one option alone is almost 15 per cent of the total value of the car.
Make no mistake, as we drove an Ibrida with these fitted (they’re only €2,500 in Italy, annoyingly, which is a little over £2,000 at today’s exchange rates), they’re utterly glorious. But come on, Alfa — who really needs bucket seats, complete with holes in the backs and a load of Alcantara cladding, in what is essentially a semi-urban runaround like this?
Magnificently, Alfa will include these seats as part of a Sport Pack, which adds not only the seats (six-way electrically adjustable for the driver but manual for the passenger), but also sport pedals and door-sill kick plates, a Sport steering wheel, the Cargo Flex Kit, an exterior sport styling kit, tinted rear windows and more Alcantara for various fascia trim panels.
The price for all this? It’s £4,100. Exactly the same as the seats on their own. So, you can either have just the chairs, or the chairs and a load of extra kit, for the same money. This is so “Alfa”.
However, even if you do splash out on the Sabelts, no amount of Alfa interior primping can hide some of the major drawbacks of the Junior’s interior.
It is related to the Jeep Avenger and Fiat 600e, both fine products in the wider Stellantis stable, but both also products which are very carefully built down to a cost.
Alfa has to fulfil both a sporty and a premium aspect of the full Stellantis portfolio, which rather means that the Junior’s cheap, nasty-looking door cards made of hard, scratchy and unyielding plastic are at odds with what you’re expecting of an Alfa cabin.
There’s another piece of matte-effect trim which runs widthways across the top of the dash which is rather unpleasant, and which also quickly shows up scratch marks if you dare to touch it, while the cowling above the instrument cluster is alarmingly flexible. And the 10.25in main infotainment isn’t brilliant either.
A general dearth of soft-touch surfaces and the proliferation of switchgear from all the more mainstream marques in the Stellantis stable further sours the Alfa experience, but that’s as nothing compared to rear-seat space.
Even behind a driver of only average height, there’s minimal legroom in the back of the Junior, which becomes even worse if a) the driver is taller than six foot, and b) you opt for the Sabelt seats. Go for the latter and their hard-shelled backs make it positively painful to sit in the back for any length of time for anyone who’s taller than your average 13-year-old.
Alfa compensates on the practicality front with what it claims is a class-leading 415-litre boot in the Junior Ibrida. That’s 15 litres more than you’d get in the same space in either the Elettrica or Veloce EVs in the range — although those cars have a little extra under-bonnet storage which, of course, the Ibrida lacks because someone has put a pesky engine in that space.
Nevertheless, even with the 60:40 split-folding rear seats lowered down to liberate up to 1,280 litres of cargo capacity, it’s not possible to truly laud the interior of the Alfa Romeo Junior, because the material quality is too patchy in places and the rear passenger room is inordinately cramped.
Luckily, the Ibrida makes up for this by driving rather well by the standards of B-segment crossovers, and most certainly when it is compared with other Stellantis cars using the same hardware.
Again, on this score, it would be stretching the realms of credibility to suggest it’s outright fun for its driver, or something that would please an Alfisti who thinks the firm’s glory age ended well before the 1980s were ushered in.
Yet Alfa’s engineers have the leeway to do their own chassis tuning on the Junior’s platform, reputedly improving its torsional rigidity (the bodyshell’s amount of flex when subjected to a twisting force) due to the model-specific frame being slightly longer at the back than other crossovers. It also gets stiffer rear anti-roll bars.
Due to the differences in weight distribution of a combustion car, with its heaviest component (the engine) mounted at the front, and an electric vehicle, where the main weight is the battery pack mounted in the floor, the Ibrida further has its own chassis tune when compared to the Elettrica and Veloce.
It also lacks for the even sportier set-up and clever limited-slip differential (which distributes power to the individual wheels for improved cornering) of the 276bhp Veloce, which has already won plenty of critical acclaim for the involving way it drives.
Therefore, you could approach the Junior Ibrida’s dynamic performance from the point of view that it’s not good enough for an enthusiast’s Alfa Romeo, and it’s not a patch on the Veloce. And both those views would be correct, to a certain extent. But perhaps missing the point.
The Junior Ibrida borrows heavily from drivetrain and chassis technology you can find underneath relations from Peugeot, Fiat and Jeep, so expecting it to drive in a wholly different manner than anything else with this 1.2-litre, three-cylinder hybrid-petrol drivetrain is unrealistic.
It’s also a compact crossover — not a particularly thrilling breed of vehicle to drive in the wider scheme of things. But then, for their intended buyer, they don’t need to be.
Despite this, though, we feel we can call the Junior Ibrida an Alfa success story. It does feel that bit sharper, in terms of its pleasing steering and impressively fluid body control, than any of its stablemates on the same hardware, or indeed any other similarly-price hybrid crossover that comes to mind.
And the performance is great. It’s not a fast car but it’s swift enough and can pile on pace quite quickly on the motorway. Clearly, while it’s only a mild-hybrid system the electrical assistance helps give the part-petrol Junior some welcome muscle.
But thankfully, the Alfa doesn’t sacrifice the everyday stuff for this added driver involvement. The Junior Ibrida is really comfortable and quiet at motorway speed, making it feel a far more assured and senior car than it actually is. And around town it proves delightfully easy-going, with good visibility and a tendency to try and run on electric power as much as it can, despite the fact that it’s a “mild hybrid” and not a “full hybrid”, like a Toyota Prius. So, you get excellent rolling refinement on the one hand and pretty entertaining dynamics on the other.
The Ibrida is also reasonably efficient. We saw 43.5mpg from our test drive, and that was while we were racing up mountain roads in northern Italy. Driven more sensibly and on even terrain, 50mpg-plus is going to be a doddle.
The crowning glory here is that the Junior Ibrida is not that expensive. While it might not be as cheap as the Fiat 600e or Jeep Avenger, a starting price of £27,895 feels like excellent value for something with the added lustre of an Alfa Romeo badge.
The Ibrida is also £6,000 cheaper than the cheapest EV version, the 154bhp Elettrica, and a whopping £14,400 less than the Veloce. Brilliant though the Veloce is, the 276bhp and sporty engineering suddenly look a little hard to justify.
It’s not even like you have to skimp on kit for the Ibrida, either, as it comes in just one specification which generously includes the twin 10.25in screens inside, a set of 17in diamond-cut alloys, adaptive cruise control and dual-zone climate control, among more.
So while the Alfa Romeo Junior Ibrida possibly doesn’t reset any parameters of driving pleasure, it has some iffy bits of interior detailing and you have to put up with a lot of shared switchgear in a cabin which doesn’t offer much in the way of rear-passenger space, otherwise this is an attractive and appealing crossover that doesn’t cost a huge amount to either buy or run.
Therefore, the Junior Ibrida is a worthwhile addition to the smallest Alfa’s range, and it’s something which makes this latest “saviour” of its parent company feel like it has a better chance of succeeding than many of its predecessors.
Whether UK customers will cotton onto that fact and give the Junior the consideration it deserves, though, remains to be seen; on this evidence, the Ibrida should definitely command more of their attention.
Related articles
- If you were interested in the mild hybrid Alfa Romeo Junior Ibrida, you might also like to read what Will Dron had to say about the Junior Veloce performance EV
- Also check out our review of the Renault 5: a fun, affordable electric car to ignite the small EV market
- Did you know Alfa Romeo is plotting an electric sports car to succeed the 4C?
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