Alfa Romeo Junior Ibrida Review 2025: Price, specs & boot space

There’s so much variety in the small SUV market that settling on one model isn’t easy, but the Alfa Romeo Junior Ibrida stands out through its styling, driving dynamics, and competitive pricing (at least before you start adding options). Cars in this class don’t tend to be the most exciting to drive or live with, so the Alfa may appeal to anyone who wants a frugal small car with an SUV form factor, but also appreciates keen handling and wants a more exotic feel.

You won’t have to spend too long deliberating here, since the Ibrida comes to the UK in just a single variant, with a single power output for its hybrid drivetrain. Differentiation is all in the options you choose: a handful of paint finishes (the most vibrant being the £700 Navigli Blue and £900 Brera Red, with optional black roofs), 17- and 18-inch wheel designs, and three option packs, the £4,100 Sport Pack, £2,200 Technology Pack, and £2,000 Premium Pack.

Take your pick: the Junior competes in one of the busiest segments in the market. It’s closely related to the Peugeot 2008, Vauxhall Mokka, Jeep Avenger, DS 3 Crossback, and Fiat 600, so hybrid versions of each of those are directly comparable, but cars like the Nissan Juke, Renault Captur, Toyota Yaris Cross, Honda HR-V and Ford Puma all come with hybrid variants that square up to the Alfa too.

Alfa’s made strides in cabin finish over the past decade or so. If not quite as flashy or touchy-feely as its Peugeot 2008 platform-mate, the Junior’s still pretty good, at least in the major touch-points. Standard cars get unremarkable but nicely-trimmed fabric seats, a synthetic leather wheel and neoprene-style dashboard, console and door inserts which are tactile enough. Sport Pack cars replace the leather and neoprene for Alcantara, which looks and feels great and lifts the cabin further – though not as far as those Sabelt seats.

There’s a lot of hard plastic, but nowhere you’d regularly touch (only car journalists go around rapping on hard plastics for a living), and the cabin of our test car felt sturdy even if the finish seemed a little cheap. Exterior fittings are pretty decent too, though you’d get tighter panel gaps on something German or Japanese.

The Junior’s 10.25-inch infotainment touchscreen is neatly angled towards the driver, and has a slim profile that doesn’t take up too much dashboard real estate or distract too much from the driving environment. It also comes with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, both of which function as you’d expect within the limitations of a screen that isn’t as large as some on the market. If you like connecting things with cables, both USB-A and USB-C ports are provided in the centre cubby.

You’ll probably want to prioritise the phone mirroring in daily driving as beyond this, it’s not a particularly great system to interact with. Your first clue is that after turning the car on it rises from its slumber like a grumpy teenager, taking a second or two to register your input to on-screen prompts.

The interface also works better at a standstill than it does on the move too – the white-on-black buttons and red highlights look sharp and modern in isolation but don’t stand out much at a glance; touchscreens are one of those areas where we’d prefer substance over style, rather than the other way around.

We didn’t get a chance to try the stereo, but navigation’s another area you’ll probably want to stick to whatever app you use on your smartphone. The built-in nav works passably well, if a little slowly on the sometimes hectic roads of the Italian launch event, but ultimately the likes of Google or Apple maps are streets ahead (no pun intended).

Alfa claims segment-leading boot space for the Junior Ibrida, at 415 litres. How the company determines that we’re not sure, and it’s presumably not just among hybrids given the Peugeot 2008 on the same platform with the same power unit packs 434 litres of space. We’re picking nits though, because functionally speaking there’s not much to choose between the Junior’s luggage area and most other cars in this class; the boot’s big enough for everyday stuff like shopping, and should fit a medium-sized suitcase or two as well.

There might have been some compromise on rear passenger room to give it a decent-sized boot though. Some experimentation with seating suggests that a 5’8” passenger can sit behind a 5’8” driver quite comfortably, if a little gloomily thanks to the large C pillars (which also restrict over-the-shoulder visibility for the driver).

If the driver is 6’1” then the 5’8” passenger’s knees brush the front seat backs, while 6’1” plus 6’1” is a recipe for pain and anguish. In summary, if your family is on the shorter scale then you’ll fit fine, but gangly teens might complain if squeezed into the back. As with the boot though, compact SUVs aren’t known for their commodious accommodation, so the Alfa’s no worse than most.

The Alfa Romeo Junior range as a whole includes electric models, but the Junior Ibrida specifically is a petrol hybrid. It’s the same 1.2-litre, three-cylinder, front-wheel drive and six-speed dual-clutch automatic system you’ll find across the Stellantis group’s small cars – in other words, it’s shared with cars like the Peugeot 2008, Jeep Avenger, and Vauxhall Mokka.

In the Alfa it makes 136PS, with unspecified contributions from a 21kW (28.5PS) electric motor, that in certain situations (such as low-speed manoeuvring, coasting, or reversing) can power the car itself, supported by a 0.9kWh, 48-volt battery. Alfa says that in urban driving it can run for 60% or more in EV mode, and 45% or more in extra-urban driving, though naturally motorway driving will be almost entirely petrol-powered.

The other numbers, 8.9 seconds from 0-62mph and 128mph, are decent enough for the segment. Brisk but not fast is the verdict, with that familiar sense of electric power filling the low end where an engine’s normally not so happy, and giving the Junior decent throttle response. In Dynamic mode the gearshifts don’t quite have the sporty ‘kick’ Alfa’s engineers claim, but this six-speed box feels sharper here than it does in its platform-mates. It’s just a shame that in manual mode it’ll still shift up automatically at the red line – and that the plastic gearshift paddles are a bit naff. The Giulia’s metal paddles would be great…

The hybrid system is a bit clunky when juggling petrol and electric power, with noticeable transitions between each, but probably not enough to distract most drivers. There’s a useful amount of regenerative braking too, making up for the lack of engine braking inherent in this 1.2-litre three-pot.

Power-juggling aside, the Ibrida’s drivetrain is fairly hushed in town and on the motorway, and a little more vocal on country roads where you’re using more of the revs. We’d actually like a little more noise on B-roads if anything; surely most Alfa buyers would tolerate, or even quite enjoy, hearing the engine now and then? Wind and road noise aren’t especially intrusive but as you’d expect for a small SUV, far from luxury-car silent. On rough roads there’s some body resonance and suspension noise too, but again, nothing buyers in this class wouldn’t expect.

Standard safety kit includes automatic emergency braking including pedestrian and vulnerable road user detection, LED headlights, and adaptive cruise control, but you’ll need to select the £2,200 technology pack for extra safety and convenience kit like a rear-view camera, cruise control with lane centring and traffic jam assist, traffic sign recognition, and all-round parking sensors (only rear sensors are standard). The limited rear visibility and high tail means we’d call this pack near-essential to avoid parking dings.

The Junior has no Euro NCAP rating as yet, though its Jeep Avenger sibling scored a disappointing three stars.

The Junior, in both hybrid and electric form, is too new for there to be any real feedback on its reliability yet, but Alfa’s last-place finish in the Honest John list of least reliable car brands isn’t especially confidence-inspiring. Nor is the fact that Jeep, whose Avenger is mechanically similar to the Junior, was second-last, Vauxhall third-last, and Peugeot, Fiat, and Citroen (all of which are siblings of Alfa Romeo) all in the bottom ten too.

At the time of writing we don’t have insurance group data for the Junior Ibrida, but given its similar drivetrain and slightly lower overall price than the Peugeot 2008, we’d expect around group 23 or a little below. The all-electric Junior Elettrica starts in group 23, too.

The Junior Ibrida has a CO2 rating of 109g/km, which puts it into the £390 bracket for first-year VED – pretty similar to most rivals. From year two onwards, it’s subject to the basic rate of £195, and even if you go mad with the options list the price doesn’t get anywhere near the £40k mark at which the expensive car supplement comes into play.

109g/km of CO2 also means a 27% Benefit in Kind rate for the Junior Ibrida – so company users will be heavily incentivised to opt for the Junior Elettrica with its 3% rate for the 2025-2026 tax year.

There are no distinct trim levels in the Alfa Romeo Junior Ibrida, so in base form all models come with exactly the same equipment: 17-inch alloy wheels, climate control, paddle shifters, rear parking sensors, manually-adjustable front seats (six-way for the driver, four-way for the passenger), keyless go, a 10.25-inch driver display and 10.25-inch touchscreen, four-speaker audio, adaptive cruise control, and front and rear LED lights.

To this you can add the £4,100 Sport Pack (Sabelt ‘Corsa’ bucket seats, sports pedals, a sports steering wheel, sport styling kit, and dark tinted rear windows), the £2,200 Technology Pack (LED matrix headlamps, navigation, six-speaker audio, front/side/rear parking sensors, a reversing camera, and several other items), and the £2,000 Premium Pack (similar to the Sport Pack, but without the Sabelt seats). There are also two 18-inch wheel designs, each priced at £660, and a selection of metallic paint finishes priced between £700 and £1,200.