Alfa Romeo MiTo TCT 2010 Review - International

Alfa Romeo MiTo TCT

It's not one of our favourite cars, the Alfa MiTo. It has too much front overhang, its doors are so ridiculously long you need to find a huge carpark to open them and the handling falls short of the class average, much less the leaders. On top of all of that, Australia is a market where 70 per cent of buyers looking for MiTo-sized cars take them with automatic gearboxes. And Alfa doesn't have one. Well, not until now

While the littlest Alfa's street and green cred took a step forward with its stronger and more-economical MultiAir engine a year ago, it's about to get a big sales boost by an even-better piece of technology. Alfa has mated the MultiAir to its first dual-clutch gearbox.

Developed at the in-house Fiat PowerTrain think tank, the new TCT gearbox is a terrific thing, combining technical brilliance with driving simplicity and fast, smooth gear shifting.  And it's efficient, featuring dry clutches, rather than the oil bathed set-up favoured by most dual-clutch gearboxes.

Volkswagen's first DSG gearbox sat its two clutches in a bath of oil (as does BMW supplier, Getrag). This means it could handle a lot of torque, but at the expense of weight, cost and friction.

VW's most recent units are dry. And so too is Fiat's design. Dubbed Twin-Clutch Technology (or TCT) by Alfa (but DDCT for Dry Dual Clutch Technology by the parent brand) is so relatively simple that it can be built on the same production line as the MiTo's six-speed manual gearbox. Indeed, the TCT shares about 40 per cent of its parts with the manual, has enough space inside to easily convert into a seven-speeder and even comes pre-designed for all-wheel drive.

Even better, it's smooth, it's fast and it's more economical than the manual gearbox, even though it weighs 81kg compared the stick-shift's 50kg.

The good news keeps coming for Alfa because it will, early next year, also fit this to gearbox to the larger Giulietta. The only real downside is that it doesn't fit alongside the ripping 1.8-litre Cloverleaf version of the engine inside the MiTo's engine bay.

Still, this six-speed gearbox should be a cause for celebration for Alfa dealers in far flung places like Australia and Japan because it's also every bit as good as a conventional, hydraulic automatic transmission but uses about 10 per cent less fuel.

Besides how good it is technically, it's also dictated some changes inside. Alfa designers have tried to give the shift lever the look and feel of a traditional automatic, with some success. There's the standard PRND layout, with another gate for manual sequential shifting (which goes the right way; eg forward for a downshift) and a gear lever itself that looks neat and, well, automatic-esque. And there's an option for paddle shifting, but that's more money.

That gives the ‘box a range of modes, including both automatic and manual versions of Dynamic, Normal and All-weather modes.

It's only a fraction more direct than a hydraulic auto on a light take-off, and that's because Fiat has turned the traditional system upside down, and uses the engine ECU as a slave to the gearbox's brain until it all gets rolling, when the engine takes over again.

The gearboxes biggest problem it has is that its first home is inside the MiTo. The engine is a thing of tremendous strength in the mid-range, but little willingness to spin freely at high rpm, even when the DNA character switch is in Dynamic with its added boost and tighter throttle response.

The engine's unchanged from the 99kW/230Nm unit it had from the birth of MultiAir, but the bottom end of the engine can't match the sophistication from the top, spinning freely isn't its thing.

You can hold the brake pedal down to build up revs for a fast launch, too, and though it won't brew up any wheelspin in the dry, it will still hit 100km/h in 8.2 seconds, which is two-tenths quicker than the manual. Most of the time, though, it will slide off from rest with a lot of dignity and the enslavement of the engine's brain means the clutch doesn't shudder or jolt from a standstill.

Left in Normal, it flits through its gears with astonishing smoothness. It's so good that it's easy to completely forget there's even a gearbox there at all.

In Dynamic, the automatic mode is much more aggressive, shifting down a gear any time you brush the brake pedal and doing it with just the right amount of throttle ‘blip' to take the load off the driveline. It also holds gears longer and it shifts more aggressively, with a satisfying little clunk on each upshift.

And with start-stop technology helping it to an average of 5.6 litres/100km on the combined run (and just 7.1 on urban roads), the TCT-equipped MiTo is surprisingly green. It emits only 126 grams of CO2/km.

Yet the MiTo's not the perfect platform for the gearbox, even though it undoubtedly helps. There is too much noise, vibration and harshness in the engine and from the chassis and there are parts of it that distract you from its good qualities, such as the interior design, the dash layout, the materials and the surprisingly practical, four-seat interior.

It has over-long doors that mean a small car needs a large car's parking space before you can comfortable get out of it, it has a high loading lip in the back and a deep, low chin that scrapes its rubber guard (which is there to protect the more vital bits) disconcertingly whenever you run over any lump larger than a cigarette butt.

The bottom line is the MiTo is a better car than it was before the MultiAir upgrades, but the front and rear suspensions still feel disorganized and it will still be upset by mid-corner bumps in high-speed situations.

But this is about the gearbox, not the rest of the MiTo, and the gearbox is very, very good.

It will just be a whole lot better, with more support, when Alfa sticks it into the Giulietta next year.

Read the latest Carsales Network news and reviews on your mobile, iPhone or PDA at the carsales mobile site