Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio review

The indoor furniture's style matches the outer sheetmetal. It's all flowing curves, not the severe straight lines of the BMW and Audi rivals. The main dials sit in deep cylindrical shrouds, recalling 1960s Alfa Spiders.

Front seats are now electric as standard, setting a spot-on driving position for most of us. Cabin storage is on par, and the boot's OK.

The touchscreen can now be set up to show one big display (nav, phone, music or performance graphs/gauges) or a few smaller windows of your choosing. Or you can just mirror your phone. The touchscreen is an arm's reach away, but mostly I actually used the rotary controller instead.

That controller has a more precise and clicky feel than before. It's one of several detail quality improvements. Not a match for the Germans, no, but not a deal-breaking distance behind.

Other ergonomics are straightforward. Climate has its own hardware controls, not screen-based. The instruments too are actual dials. Because of that, and the absence of a head-up display, you don't have squillions of configurations to play with. But that's OK because the factory one is fine. Traditional in concept, modern in execution.