2019 Alfa Romeo Giulia Performance

At its price point, the Alfa offers brilliant performance, especially when compared to the BMW 330i and Audi A4 2.0T. The Giulia is a more powerful car, and you can feel it on the road; a zero to sixty time of 5.1 seconds is blisteringly quick, especially coming from an entry-level compact premium sedan, and beats the BMW by 0.3 of a second. The Giulia has been set up for confident driving with, perhaps, a leaning bias towards the sporty side, which is made evident when pushing the car a bit harder around town. The overall experience gives a glimpse at what the car is capable of, but to truly experience the full might of the Giulia, you'll have to get in the 505-hp Quadrifoglio. Still, with standard rear-wheel-drive and optional rear-biased all-wheel-drive, the Giulia is a sports sedan in its truest form.

A turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine powers the Giulia range, and unlike most other modern small capacity turbocharged engines, the one in the Giulia actually has some character. Power is measured at 280 hp and torque at 306 lb-ft. All models are fitted with an eight-speed ZF automatic transmission - the same as the one used by BMW - that offers quick shifts in dynamic and sport modes, but settles down nicely when puttering around at city speeds. Where most entry-level to mid-range turbo engines sound like muffled sewing machines, the Alfa's engine emits a raspy snarl when you press down on the accelerator pedal, and shoves all 306 lb-ft of torque in your face low down in the rev range. In all-wheel-drive guise, the Giulia will show no signs of wheel slip, but in rear-wheel-drive, it'll want to get the tires lit up, even if the traction control prohibits it.

Class-leading power comes with a price; the Alfa Romeo Giulia will use slightly more fuel in base trim than the BMW 3 Series or Audi A4. The RWD Sport, the most efficient in the range, will return 24/33/27 mpg city/highway/combined, not bad for a car that can accelerate to sixty in the low five-second range. Both the BMW and Audi will see 30 mpg on a combined cycle. Opting for the Q4 AWD version sees the Giulia's figures drop to 23/31/26 mpg, while the BMW 330i xDrive will get 28 mpg combined and the Audi A4 Quattro 27 mpg. The Giulia is fitted with a 15.3-gallon fuel tank, giving it an estimated combined range of between 436 miles in mixed driving on a base RWD model.