Alfa Romeo MiTo

Alfa serves up a nice little car that drives well. Looks a bit odd, but has character.

• Comfort

  The Mito has a strange habit of getting all crashy over big bumps - though it copes well with the smaller stuff in town. It's not huge, but you can get away with most forms of human life, and the long sixth gear makes cruising ok.

  

• Performance

  We've only tried the 1.4-litre turbo ‘Veloce' and it's good stuff: 0-62mph in 8, 135mph top end, 153bhp and 169lb ft with ‘overboost' feature. It feels a bit quicker in real life and the Q2 electronic limited slip diff works well. 

  

• Cool

  Small cars with character are all the rage right now - and the Mito scores high. People who remember the Alfasud might well get a little thrill out of a cheaper, more accessible Alfa model.

  

• Quality

  Seems pretty good across the board - though longevity has always been Alfa's problem - we shall see.

  

• Handling

  That ABS-led fake slippy diff really works, so the Mito is a tidy little car to hustle. It also has a ‘DNA' sports switch which allows you to mess with steering weight, overboost control and stability control when flicking between ‘Dynamic',  ‘normal' and ‘all-weather'. It corners flat, with good resistance to understeer. We like it. 

  

• Practicality

  It's not a big car, but the space is adequate. A little style over squareness never hurt anybody anyway.

  

• Running costs

  Should be cheap enough – even the fast Veloce is ‘only’ a 1.4 don’t forget – at least until they get around to making a GTA version. It’ll do mid 40s mpg and pumps out 153g/km C02, so nothing too heavy. Most unlike an Alfa, in fact.