Category: Affordable Sports 
Price Range: £23,495 to £29,250
Dramatic concept car styling, great-sounding engines, crisp handling with good ride, stylish cabin, panoramic glass roof
Limited space in the back, steering lacks true road feel, transmission can be clunky
Giugiaro's 2002 concept-car-made-real is a rapid, properly sporting coupe with a full complement of Alfa virtues.
Ah, reliability... it always crops up in an Alfa Romeo conversation.
We've heard this before, but it really does seem that, this time, Alfa Romeo has taken steps to make its new cars reliable and durable, and to offer an improved dealer experience, but we won't know how deep-rooted the new thinking is until the cars have been around for a few years.
First impressions of the Brera are good: everything fits together neatly, the paintwork is glassy and the whole car feels very tough and solid. The tactile experience is good, too; all interior surfaces that you'd want to be padded are padded, even down to the inside of the door pockets where your hand grasps them, and the pieces of mock-aluminium interior trim are convincing.
The centre console gets real aluminium. Seats on UK models are all in soft leather, and the grain texture on the plastic parts looks sophisticated.
The carpet fit under the glovebox is ugly, though, and our test car's front foglights had condensation inside them. Also, the right-hand-drive cars we drove did have interior panel rattles when driven over rough surfaces. We'll keep you posted.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Alfa Romeo Brera
wrote on 13 10 2006
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