NAVIGATING THE EDGE BETWEEN TRADITION AND INNOVATION
ALFA ROMEO JUNIOR
2 July 2024 • Written By Marius Pop
With the record the Milanese brand holds you could fill not one, but several books of heroic deeds. And yet in between reaching the peaks of the automotive Olympus and the big history-making headlines there is a lot of less glamorous but equally important work to do. The sap that goes into the spine of the glorious book.
And because the world is changing, this proves to be a car of so many firsts for Alfa Romeo. The first B-Segment SUV. The first fully electric Biscione. The first one to be built exclusively outside Italy, with the unprecedented fumble of the name change from the initially chosen Milano to the final designation as the Junior. And the first one of the Stellantis era to be built on a platform it shares with its sister cars Fiat 600 and Jeep Avenger.
To this latter issue, our welcoming host at Centro Stile in Torino – Daniel Guzzafame, the project manager – is quick to hit the nail in the head: ‘The definition of a shared platform is something I always want to be precise with: the platform is the base made of two rails that are used for the crash test, but when you start changing everything around it – the steering, the suspension, the rigidity of the floor – everything around you will start behaving differently, and that’s exactly what we did on the Junior.’
A common platform, but a car tailored to the young, urban alfisti’s in the making needs, as Daniel continues explaining: ‘Being consistent with what Alfa stands for, means we wanted the Junior to give out a feeling similar to skiing, or carving through traffic on a motorbike: you look in one direction and the car will follow instantly that way.’ Daniel is confident about Alfa engineers’ work: ‘If we compare the Junior to all of its premium competitors we are easily 200 kg below anyone else in its category.’
