Alfa Giulia QV
A need for new tyres provided an excuse to visit an Alfa dealer with racing heritage
Smooth visit to a storied dealership
WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT
To find out if Alfa has regained its mojo with this BMW M3-bashing super-saloon
The low tyre pressure warning that was mentioned in the previous report turned out not to be caused by a slow leak, as we first thought, but by a faulty sensor on the Giulia’s nearside rear wheel. I discovered this when I took the car to Alfa Romeo dealer HWM to get all four tyres replaced.
I’d been looking for an opportunity to find out what sort of aftersales care we could expect from HWM – not only our nearest Alfa dealership but also the world’s oldest Aston Martin dealer and a former racing car constructor – and the need to fit new tyres gave us a good excuse to visit its service centre in Hersham, Surrey.
Given HWM’S history, I suspected it would be an interesting experience, and I wasn’t disappointed. While the work was being carried out on the Giulia, I got to have a good look around the workshop, where a number of lovely customer cars are kept in storage and which is also home to a 1950s HWM Formula 2 racer that’s still owned by the company. If you’re an Alfa owner, the chances are you’ll enjoy the opportunity to loiter there while your car is being worked on, if you want to.
The fact that the Giulia’s tyres needed replacing after just 4000 miles in our hands – all on the road – might seem like a shocking rate of wear, but bear in mind that the QV wears sticky, high-performance Pirelli P Zero Corsa tyres, developed specifically for the car, so you can’t expect them to last as long as more everyday ones. Nor would you want anything less on a car of this calibre – in warm conditions, at least.
The other mitigating factor is that the tyres weren’t brand new when we took delivery of the car, which already had 7000 miles on the clock at that point. The tyres had already been replaced at least once, earlier in the year, so it would appear that the set we’ve just taken off had actually covered between 6000 and 7000 miles. That’s still a pretty severe wear rate, but I suspect most QV owners will be able to better that in normal road use. Curiously, the front tyres were looking more shot than the rears, with severely scuffed shoulders, suggesting that there’s a price to pay for having such quick steering and phenomenal front-end bite.
The bill from HWM came to £1276, but a bit of online research revealed that it could be reduced by more than £100 by going to a tyre dealer such as Black Circles. Although the job took a little longer than expected to complete (the new tyres were reluctant to seal properly on the rims) and the faulty sensor couldn’t be sorted on the day, the experience was entirely a positive one for me. I’d be more than happy with the standard of service if I’d bought the car from HWM in the first place.
The Corsa tyres may be the business when they’re hot and sticky, but they’re less happy in colder, wetter conditions. To be fair, there’s still plenty of grip, but the electronics have to work overtime to rein in the rear wheels’ eagerness to spin up, and the car feels stifflegged when the tyres can’t get enough heat in them. The rear end tends to react more to bumps with a sideways kick, too.
Since the Giulia is about to take part in our annual Britain’s Best Driver’s Car extravaganza and will therefore be crying out for yet another set of tyres immediately afterwards, that might be the ideal time to try it on winter rubber, hopefully making it feel more comfortable as the temperature gauge heads into single figures. I wouldn’t normally bother, but I suspect the Giulia will respond well to such a move.
Best of all, Pirelli’s Sottozero winter tyres are available in the right sizes to go onto the QV’S lovely 19in alloys, so I don’t have to mar the car’s brooding good looks.