If you’re a car manufacturer, it’s never a good day when you end up on an unfavorable Consumer Reports list. Unfortunately for Alfa Romeo, though, that’s precisely what has happened with its Giulia. Nevertheless, not everyone agrees that the Giulia is a car to avoid. It’s a car that seems to inspire a variety of strong opinions. 

Consumer Reports thinks the Alfa Romeo Giulia is terrible

While Consumer Reports had a few nice things to say about the 2020 Alfa Romeo Giulia, the bad certainly outweighed the good in their evaluation of the car. On the positive side, the organization praised the sedan’s design and capacity for speed. They also had good things to say about the Giulia’s safety features. 

Overall, though, Consumer Reports felt that the Alfa Romeo Giulia left quite a bit to be desired. A cramped back seat and trunk, excessively low dash vents, and a noisy engine were all marks against the car. Even more critical, it received pretty low scores for reliability.  According to Consumer Reports, if you buy a Giulia, there’s only a 13% chance you won’t need to get any repairs done on it in a three-year period. 

The Giulia broke Car and Driver’s testers’ hearts

Consumer Reports isn’t the only organization to find fault with the Alfa Romeo Giulia. Car and Driver wrote a similarly scathing review of the 2018 Giulia Quadrifoglio’s reliability.  They even went so far as to declare themselves “heartbroken” about the car’s performance over 40,000 miles.

What led to the despair of Car and Driver testers? To sum it up in one word: repairs. During the 14 months that they test drove the vehicle, the Giulia ended up in the repair shop constantly, starting with only 2,400 miles on its odometer. Appallingly, during its 14 months with the Car and Driver team, the Giulia spent an incredible 80 days in the repair shop. 

To say that Car and Driver was disappointed with this performance would be an understatement. Given all the hopes they’d had for the Giulia Quadrifoglio and the delight that they experienced in its handling, the fact that it was so utterly unreliable was a tough pill to swallow. 

Jalopnik has its own opinion of the Giulia

Not everyone shares Car and Driver’s and Consumer Reports’ disdain for the Alfa Romeo Giulia based on its reliability record. For one, Jalopnik includes the car in its list, “The Best Cars No One Bought.” 

Declaring the quality concerns “bullshit,” Jalopnik says that the Giulia’s “formula is perfect as a right-sized, right-powered, RWD sedan that’s stylish and fun as hell to drive.”

However, Jalopnik readers weren’t as quick to jump on board with the Giulia, with many commenting that its repair record was something to take seriously. One commented, for example, “I don’t have to have driven a Giulia to look at repair frequency data and know that the car will likely spend much of its life in the shop.” 

Another commenter reported that they were able to return their Giulia lease after 60 days due to excessive, unsolvable repair issues. All in all, it seems few commenters agreed with the idea that the Giulia belonged on any list of “best cars,” and many would be reluctant to buy one, whether new or used.  

What does the 2021 Alfa Romeo Giulia have to offer?

So, what does attract people to the Alfa Romeo Giulia? Consumer Reports provides a helpful overview of this year’s model, which gives some idea of what the 2021 model has going for it.  

For starters, there’s the price. The starting MSRP for the car is only $40,350, which is definitely on the low end for a luxury vehicle of its type. Its acceleration capability is also noteworthy, as it can go from 0 to 60 in only 6.7 seconds. 

With 33 mpg highway fuel efficiency, the car also gets high marks in that department for a luxury car. If the manufacturer could get some of the Giulia’s reliability kinks worked out, they’d likely have a genuine hit on their hands.