Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrafoglio
Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrafoglio
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davek_964

Original Poster:

10,374 posts

193 months

Sunday 3rd August
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A couple of months ago, I began to think it was time to replace my old TT convertible. I've owned it for 3 or 4 years and it does the job I bought it for (daily runaround) well - but I've never really liked driving it much.
The rear window glass glue failed and although my attempt to repair that seems successful I decided it was time to look for a replacement.

I test drove a Z4 M40i, having always liked the look of them. But it was much slower than I expected and I didn't really like it as a car.
M4 was on my list - especially since I could have hard top convertible - but there were none local. Randomly, I looked up the Quadrafoglio - and there was one local - so I test drove it. That particular car wasn't the one for me but it did show me that I wanted to own one. A properly quick car but also one that handled really well.

The next day, I'd agreed to buy a private example. 2019 with 36k miles on it. Pretty high spec and everything I was looking for - although not my favourite colour. But even that's grown on me in the month I've owned it.







Outside the car is excellent - inside it's literally like new.

The next service is due in October - but I already have a car that needs servicing in October so I've moved the Alfa forward to September to avoid trying to fit them both in during the same month.
I knew when I bought it that it would need front brakes soon - discs and pads. This was negotiated into the price although I confess that I misjudged how much they would cost - and the local indy believes I need rears too.
Usually, I'd replace brakes myself but don't feel like doing it on a car I've just bought so it will be done at the service.
It has cruise, but - despite having all the necessary hardware (apart from a blanked out switch) it's not adaptive. I will have this coded in at the service.

I discovered that stop / start didn't work, so have replaced the battery which cured that (and means I have to remember to press the button to disable it!)
The boot needed 4 or 5 slams to close so I've adjusted that and it now closes correctly.

I've owned the car for one month now and I'm very impressed with it. A lot of its use is mundane stuff - commuting to work, shopping etc which it does very well - apart from how much petrol it uses.
We took it on a 100 mile trip a couple of weeks ago - mostly motorway but with some country roads thrown in - and it's excellent.
You can trundle on the motorway - in mode 'a' and it's very comfortable, quiet and easy to drive. It was managing high 20s mpg.
On a country road - in 'd' or race mode and it is a totally different car. I'm used to 2 seaters so I do feel its size a bit but it is hugely entertaining to drive and a lot of fun.

The negatives so far are more about it being a modern car with annoying safety aids than particular to this car.
Unless you're in race mode, braking hard on a twisty road will have your hazards flashing which is pretty annoying. You can get it coded out but on motorways I don't think it's a bad thing so will probably just use race mode more.
Collision detection is over sensitive (even if you change the sensitivity) and will often alert if people are queueing to turn right and you're going straight on in the left lane. Again, it's disabled in race mode but tends to happen in situations where I wouldn't be using race mode.

Fuel consumption is poor. I expected it to be poor but hoped I'd see 20mpg - but the reality on shorter journeys is more like 17mpg.

At my age insurance seems reasonable - on a multi car policy with about 60 days remaining it cost me about £60 to insure so I'm assuming about £350 a year. I'll find out this month since it renews at the start of September.

So, overall very happy with the purchase. It is absolutely total overkill for what I need - but it's a car I want to drive, which the TT never was (although we've actually kept that as well because apparently we still needed a cheap convertible runaround).

Will update again after the service if not before. I've been quoted a fairly horrendous ~£3k for the brakes, and once you add the actual service plus cruise coding, plus anything else they find it's going to be £4k+. But I won't do a lot of miles so this brake cost is a one off - and the first service always costs me a chunk when I buy a nice car because I want everything sorted.
Hopefully it will get (slightly) cheaper going forward......

InformationSuperHighway

7,048 posts

202 months

Sunday 3rd August
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Very rare and unusual in silver. Quite classy really.

Looks great

CountyLines

3,669 posts

21 months

Sunday 3rd August
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Bookmarked. Love these.

ITP

2,282 posts

215 months

Sunday 3rd August
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Great car, nice buy. A solid secondhand buy too now they’ve gone out of production.
3k sounds a bit much for the brakes, is that main dealer prices? You are better off taking these to specialists anyway, like Alfa workshop for example. I think they are more like 2k for brakes all round for example.

OliilO

211 posts

155 months

Sunday 3rd August
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Good choice; I've got a comp red one and have loved it.

Discs and pads are easy enough to do it you do change your mind - there's nothing special about it if you disconnect the battery first. A set of discs was about £700 from autodoc.

Interesting on efficiency. I see mid thirties on a steady motorway run (highest was 37) and average low 20s across my local driving.

ITP

2,282 posts

215 months

Sunday 3rd August
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Not sure if it’s true with regard to fuel efficiency, but I believe the early cars, up to summer 2018 production, were direct injection only, euro6b. After that they went to direct AND port injection, euro 6d, and were not as fuel efficient as the first cars.

Sofa

542 posts

110 months

Sunday 3rd August
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davek_964 said:
I test drove a Z4 M40i, having always liked the look of them. But it was much slower than I expected and I didn't really like it as a car.
I'm surprised you thought that- I've not driven a Z4 M40i but my Mum used to have a Z4 20i of the 'current' shape which I drove a few times and always thought felt much quicker than it was on paper, and I've driven quite a few other BMWs with the B58 and never been disappointed by the performance, so I'd have thought it would be pretty lairy in a Z4.

Lovely car, I think Alfa absolutely nailed it with the Giulia QV and I'll forever be glad that it got made. I'd love one for my next car but sadly at my budget I'd be looking at the very bottom end of the market and I'm not sure I'm brave enough for a ropey example of an Alfa with a Ferrari-derived engine...

Edited by Sofa on Sunday 3rd August 22:33

Matty_

2,211 posts

275 months

Sunday 3rd August
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Setup an alert for the disks with Autodoc - they're *massively* cheaper and despite what you may read, identical to OEM; you can get a pair for £500 and the pads are really cheap from Alfaworkshop too.

Also, for the love of your sanity, get the radar blocker fitted! Thread is here:
https://www.alfaowner.com/threads/security-device-...

Oh, and get a manual valve switch - join the Facebook group and a guy called Dan sells them for £150. Otherwise, you only get valves open permantly in Race.

Two of my biggest criticisms of mine were:
It creeps forward at about 5mph! The problem with this is, coming to a gentle chauffeur stop is impossible, as you can't ease off the brakes at the last second, leading to rather jerky stops.
The throttle mapping in Dynamic is horrible - the 0-10% movement feels like it goes to 10% instantly; this means that coming on/off the throttle also makes for jerky movement. I found myself moving from D to N very frequently.

Edited by Matty_ on Sunday 3rd August 22:44

Matty_

2,211 posts

275 months

Sunday 3rd August
quotequote all
Oh, one last thing - they're incredibly reliable cars - mine had done 45k and the only thing fixed was a headlight, done shortly after it was delivered. The 2019 car that you have is probably the best of the lot; has many of the fixes/improvements (like the split seats, factory CarPlay, revised scuttle panel, better idling, and other minor fixes) but before they put the extra refinement in place, and removed the carbon roof.

I'd also avoid Alfa dealers; get yourself a good specialist.

davek_964

Original Poster:

10,374 posts

193 months

Monday 4th August
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I'm not using Alfa dealers - the brake price was AHM who are very close to me, and they will be servicing it.

Radar blocking was one of the first things I did.

Regarding the Z4, I think part of the reason it didn't feel quick was due to its weight - which I think is about the same as the quad, even though it was a much smaller car.
But there were other things I didn't like about it anyway.

I've read comments about problems coming to a smooth stop before - I find that's mostly ok, but it is true that rather than 'creep' forward if you take your foot off the accelerator it feels like it instantly wants to do 30mph which is a tad annoying!

Edited by davek_964 on Monday 4th August 05:33

OliilO

211 posts

155 months

Monday 4th August
quotequote all
Matty_ said:
Two of my biggest criticisms of mine were:
It creeps forward at about 5mph! The problem with this is, coming to a gentle chauffeur stop is impossible, as you can't ease off the brakes at the last second, leading to rather jerky stops.
The throttle mapping in Dynamic is horrible - the 0-10% movement feels like it goes to 10% instantly; this means that coming on/off the throttle also makes for jerky movement. I found myself moving from D to N very frequently.
I agree the throttle is quite sharp in D but find that N is a bit slow when balancing the car on the entry to corners when driving more quickly.

My biggest frustration though is the torque limit in everything but Race! I still wouldn't change the car for anything else though.

ITP

2,282 posts

215 months

Monday 4th August
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Sounds like the answer is just to drive everywhere in race, but be super careful if its a low grip day!

macron

12,122 posts

184 months

Monday 4th August
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I'm so pleased you started this, what a car!

Its Just Adz

16,685 posts

227 months

Monday 4th August
quotequote all
Great looking car, especially in silver.
I would be having the wheels done silver to match, but that's just personal taste.

davek_964

Original Poster:

10,374 posts

193 months

Monday 4th August
quotequote all
Its Just Adz said:
Great looking car, especially in silver.
I would be having the wheels done silver to match, but that's just personal taste.
For me, the black wheels suit it.

I may have to get them done at some point - they're bubbling which is apparently a fairly common issue.

davek_964

Original Poster:

10,374 posts

193 months

Tuesday 23rd September
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Yesterday was service time - with mixed results - so I thought I'd give an update.

I've owned the car a bit under 3 months now - but I've done less than 1000 miles in that time because it's mostly used for normal work / shopping duties - which it does very well, if you can live with its rather high petrol use on shorter journeys.

I added a wireless adaptor for Android Auto. Android Auto on these cars is a bit odd (it might be better on the later models) - although carplay uses the entire media screen, Android Auto only uses the left half - with an "Android Auto" icon on the right half. A tad annoying - but a search online showed that the AA Wireless adaptor would do Android Auto - but, pretend to be carplay to the car. Hence - full screen display.
Except......... it doesn't. V1 did that - but these days they sell V2, and they don't support that anymore. On the other hand, it works very well - occasionally my phone doesn't connect but that is solved by rebooting the phone so I suspect a phone issue rather than a dongle issue.



Insurance was disappointing. I mentioned on my last post that having paid about £60 for 60 days I expected about £350 for the year. I was wrong - at £550 it's the most expensive car we have to insure - which is a tad surprising considering what one of the other cars is, but I guess that is far cheaper than I'd expect it to be so it all evens out.

Registration plate has been changed to a private plate - and it's just as well it was, because a month into ownership I started getting fines for a cloned plate. Previous owner said he never had this, so I suspect it's either from the For Sale ad or from the picture I posted on here (which I've changed since to blank out the plate). One fine was Dartford crossing, one was for driving away without paying for petrol - both on the same day, 4 hours apart. I suspect it was a car that was stolen that day - it is easily done on these, which probably explains the insurance cost.

There is a mod you can make to prevent them being quite so easy to steal - it's not information that is publicly available so I won't post details here, but I have done it to mine so it is a bit less likely to go missing.

I've had to use the windscreen demister a few times recently, and have noticed one oddity - when you turn the demister off, it turns off the air con. Slightly........ Italian - but once you know it does it, it's no big deal to switch it back on I suppose.

As the days get shorter, I've also driven it once in the dark and have experienced modern headlights for the first time. They are very good - nice and bright - but the real surprise is that they also seem to be directional - i.e. they point around a bend. A bit disconcerting the first time!

So - to the service, which was carried out by AHM yesterday. It was booked in for the 6 year service, pads and discs all round (ouch - £££s), reduce alarm sensitivity since it's going off far too often, and make the cruise control adaptive. Adaptive cruise gives you an extra button and a nice distance display :





Unfortunately (although it's obviously a very positive thing) - AHM are very thorough and give the car a very good look over when they service it - so I got a phone call an hour after dropping it off with a list of things they'd found, asking if I wanted any of them done.

The first was the coolant tank - they have a tendency to crack, and mine was already showing signs of this even though it wasn't leaking (I had seen this myself). So I was asked if I wanted it sorted, or to wait until it leaked - obviously I chose to get it done now.

Dump valve should have a cover on it which was missing - that was added.

The early cars had a brilliant design, in which the scuttle panel dumped rainwater on top of the ECU. Alfa "fixed" this for the 2019 cars, but it was only a partial fix - AHM have an improvement for this, so that was done too.

Finally - the nearside headlight. When I viewed the car before buying, I had checked the MOT history - and seen that in April, it failed due to no high beam on nearside headlight. I asked the seller about this, and he said something along the lines of : it was a mistake by the MOT tester, and he'd gone along and sorted it out. Stupidly, I didn't check the light when I bought it (it had subsequently passed the MOT after all) - but yesterday I was told that the car had the same problem - in fact, it did illuminate, but it didn't tilt up.
I didn't notice I only had one high beam at the weekend - so I texted the guy that sold me the car to see what had happened at the MOT. He told me that in fact, it had failed - he'd them collected the car and found that the light was working OK a few days later - so taken it back and passed the MOT.
AHM told me that there is a wire that often breaks - but mine is fine. However, after an hour of fiddling with the wiring trying to find the fault - it started working again. Since it's very difficult to find a fault that isn't present, we made the decision to leave it for now and I'll have to check the lights regularly to see how much of an issue it is - which should be easier at this time of year.

Apart from that, I was told that it is a very sound car - which was good to hear. Although I was told that just before they presented me with the bill, so maybe it was just trying to make me feel better about that wink
It was expensive, but I expected it to be - not least because the brakes alone comes to close to £3k. But I feel the car is pretty sorted now and it should be a one off cost so I can live with it.

Driving the car home from the service was a bit of an odd experience. The first thing I wanted to do was try the active cruise - but bizarrely, even though it was the tail end of rush hour and I was pulling out onto a main road - there were absolutely no cars. A couple of miles later, I got to one of the local twisty roads which was on the route home - and still hadn't caught any cars up - but the plus side of that was a nice blast down that road.
I mentioned in my first post that - although I really like the way the car handles - it felt big compared to the kind of cars I'm used to. That feeling has remained - I'm always aware of its size and it never feels entirely planted to me (it's got Bridgestone tyres on it). On the way back from the service yesterday though, it felt like a different car - it no longer felt big, and it felt entirely planted on the road. It's a little strange - there is nothing in the service that would affect how the car feels - except perhaps the brakes. They were knackered, and it did feel a little under braked occasionally - whereas now they are vastly better - so maybe that inspires more confidence, or maybe I've just got used to the car (even though most of my driving isn't like that).
Either way, it felt fabulous and was easily the best drive I've had in it - which at least made the service bill easier to swallow.

Eventually, I did catch some cars up and the adaptive cruise was impressive - on a motorway, I think it will be very handy even though it's pretty rare that the car is used that way.

I do think that the driver aids - at least the warnings - are way too sensitive in this car. For example, I got to work this morning and was reversing into a car parking space when somebody else arrived and was driving (slowly) towards where I was parking. They were still a good 20ft away when the sensor on the car noticed them (the mirror sensor to warn you of blindspots) and started frantically beeping. It's a bit like the boy who cried wolf - it beeps unnecessarily often enough that I'm not sure I'd pay it any attention when it was genuine.

Apart from that kind of minor annoyance though - and the rather unfortunate bill yesterday - I am very happy with it. It is at least 2 - if not 3 - completely different cars when you change modes, and it is very impressive. Whether it will pass the next MOT in April with a dodgy headlight remains to be seen though!

Edited by davek_964 on Tuesday 23 September 08:36

AnhBanhBao

282 posts

65 months

Tuesday 23rd September
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I do still like these, despite the iffy last few weeks you may have had with yours.

And Kerrang! Radio too, thought it was only me!

bencollins4

1,219 posts

224 months

Tuesday 23rd September
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My heart skipped a beat when I saw a silver one….mine was sadly stolen off my drive in a sleepy village in East Sussex in March. Amazing car, but waste no time with the radar cover mod. And yes, while they drink at a pretty alarming rate using full throttle in race mode, I usually got well over 30 mpg on a long journey driving with restraint.

Edit: Missed the bit where you said you have done the mod. Fingers crossed it should be ok then. Enjoy it!