Raising the sports bar

With its fearsome speed, Alfa Romeo’s Stelvio QF blows workaday SUVs away.

If you can’t shake off your preconceptions that SUVs are dull, cumbersome boxes with handling that make Seventies American cop cars look sharp, then Alfa Romeo’s Stelvio Quadrifoglio should put that particular matter to bed. It will probably tuck it in and babysit it until you get back too.

From the same crack department (the four-leaf clover “Quadrifoglio” badge is a nod to Alfa’s racing past and now represents the brand’s high-performance arm) that turned Alfa’s Giulia saloon into one of the cars of 2017, this is an SUV with a personality disorder. It thinks it’s a supercar and it may well be right.

With a Ferrari-derived 2.9-litre V6 twinturbocharged engine, tuned to a mammoth 503hp, it broke the SUV lap record at the benchmark Nürburgring — in an eye- and possibly ear-, nose- and throat-watering 7mins 51secs. From a standing start, it reaches 62mph in 3.8secs: a number that puts it straight onto the “fastest production SUV in the world” plinth.

Most impressively and surprisingly for a car this big and tall, however, is how this speed and power translates into real-life driving. Its direct steering, agile cornering and eager personality give it the rarest quality in the whole SUV market: fun.

It’s packaged in the same curvy body of the standard model but slightly blunted and brutalised, as if kidnapped by a crime gang for a particularly dangerous bank heist.

And boy would this car be handy in such circumstances. Not that we’re advocating grand larceny. And when the cops have gone, you’re left with a composed ride at normal speed and an interior that also has a Ferrari touch about it, with shiny carbon coming at you from every direction.

Yes, there are many things in the world that aren’t strictly necessary and an SUV this quick is probably one of them. But we’re grateful it’s here.