Test drive Alfa Romeo Giulietta LPG: Day 1 Perpignan > Monaco

We climb into the Alfa Romeo Giulietta LPG we’ve been able to test across Europe, turn the key and start the engine to begin the first day of the road trip through the south of France. In this series of articles we’ll share details about the car, our driving impressions and curiosities.

But we also want you to do some sightseeing with us, so we’ll tell you about the places that impressed us most, cities to visit and driving curiosities in the different countries we’ve crossed by car. With the first stage, we set off from the south of France…

Day 1: Perpignan > Monaco [677 km-No Tolls]

We started the route in the south of France, but we didn’t teleport there, on day 0 we covered the stretch between Madrid and Perpignan, but it was a fast route on the motorway with few stops. In Perpignan, right at the start of the day we had to find a dealership Alfa Romeo to buy an LPG adapter for the neighbouring country (Spain and Portugal use one adapter, France and Italy another, Germany yet another…). As has happened to us on other occasions, in the end we turned to a spare parts shop, which pointed us to the official dealership, and in no time the problem was solved.

Leaving Perpignan, all by road avoiding toll motorways, the route runs through a landscape full of vineyards and small villages where the legendary “Chateaux” selling wine and local products are never far away. In the interior of the French Riviera there is a village that is well worth stopping at, Carcassonne.

This medieval village with its walls (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) and very well preserved (like almost all medieval villages in France) stands out both for its uniqueness and for its location in the middle of Provence, surrounded by vineyards.

Our next stop will be Sète, a small coastal town with several canals running through its centre. On the way to Sète we passed enormous beaches that were completely empty (in the middle of September) but that will surely be packed in summer. In Sète we took the opportunity to have lunch and then set course for Marseille.

Marseille is an interesting city, we recommend taking great care when driving through the city. It is a difficult city and the traffic is truly chaotic. It is a very large city with a lot of traffic that is poorly managed: cars constantly cut across each other, you have to watch out for motorbikes overtaking on any side, and if there is an obstacle in a street, beware, because cars will get around it any way they can.

After leaving the chaos we headed for St-Tropez (the Marbella of the French Riviera), on the way avoiding the motorway and going through a mountain road full of bends and beautiful scenery, where we tested the car’s dynamics, before finally reaching Toulon (a typically touristic town full of large yachts).

Night was falling as we arrived in St-Tropez, a very small coastal village but loaded with luxury and large yachts (large? no, mega-yachts) in the harbour. High-end vehicles (Rolls Royce, Bentley, Porsche,…) are a common sight in the harbour. It was a Friday late evening, and we could see several multi-deck yachts in the harbour, curiously one of them rented by a company related to Google (according to the crew who told us).

We left the luxury of St-Tropez behind and continued on towards Cannes, with its large seafront promenade and its luxurious hotels. We carried on towards Nice, our last stop of the day before heading to Monaco the next day (it is half an hour from Nice) and continuing on to Italy. Both Cannes and Nice stand out for their seafront promenades and their sumptuous hotels. Curiously, in both cities the beach is “occupied” by restaurants, cafés, etc., which force you to pay to use it, leaving only a small strip of beach that is completely free.

And watch the opening hours, we are in Europe, in the villages from 7 in the evening they won’t even serve you a simple coffee “the machine is already cleaned” and for dinner don’t leave it later than 10 at night. The curious thing is that in a city as touristic as Nice, on a Friday, at midnight the McDonald’s was barely open to get something to eat.

And if we want to go to a shop, company or similar, lunch hours run from 12 noon to 2 in the afternoon, and any workshop or shop will be closed during that time.

Driving impressions

As we mentioned in the first article,

this LPG Alfa Romeo Giulietta was a very interesting test, because it was the first time we could analyse in detail a car powered by autogas with a turbo petrol engine.

The mechanics is a 1.4 Turbo producing 120 CV, a very performance-oriented engine thanks to the turbo and a good alternative to diesel. To be honest, I thought that running on LPG the response would be much more relaxed, but it is clear that Fiat Powertrain (the engine’s creators) have done a good job.

As soon as we sit in the car we see a driving position in the Alfa style, that is, with sportiness as its foundation. Whether it’s the instrumentation, the seats that hug the body very well, the steering wheel or the presence of DNA, the sporty character comes through.

Speaking of instrumentation, we were surprised that it was in Italian, and since this model runs on LPG the on-board computer offers no data on average consumption, range or instant consumption. With little time to dwell on the other details, we set off from Madrid and hit the road.

To run on LPG or petrol, there is a control near the gear lever that shows the gas tank level and lets us choose the operating mode. If we select LPG and it runs out, it automatically switches to petrol without us having to do anything.

The first autogas tank lasts 440 km (bearing in mind it has a capacity of approx. 37 litres); LPG consumption on the motorway is around 8 litres per 100 km. That figure is close to the average gas consumption it will have throughout the route, but we must remember that the litre costs 0.80 euros.

With the first kilometres we noticed the sporty feel of the gearbox, with six speeds, and on a stretch of bends descending through the mountains to Toulon we put its dynamics to the test. We like the response, it is a very agile car with suspension that strikes a successful balance between dynamism and comfort (despite the low-profile tyres).

Precisely in this stretch of mountain bends, we engaged the Dynamic mode of DNA. Despite its 120 CV it is great fun, the turbo does its job very well and the car brings out more than one smile. The seats hold the body well, with good lateral support on the bends.

At first I thought its 120 CV wouldn’t deliver much excitement, but as the route went on I realised the engine response is good, that with LPG we don’t notice an excessive loss of power (something that does happen with naturally aspirated petrol engines), and that it is a fun car for enjoying winding roads or simply tracing nimbly through the endless roundabouts that await us at the entrance and exit of French villages.

On the next leg we set off from Monaco and cross into the native country of our Alfa Romeo, destination Milan.

Photos | Highmotor test team