A new Alfa Romeo Mito is on the cards as the Italian firm prepares to rapidly expand its line-up over the next few years.
Brand boss Jean-Philippe Imparato has confirmed that there will be a new car every year until 2030 under new owner Stellantis. A small SUV, dubbed the Brennero, will arrive by 2025, plus there will be replacements for the Alfa Romeo Giulia saloon and Alfa Romeo Stelvio SUV, as well as the anticipated return of the Alfa Romeo GTV coupé.
A new supermini is also being primed to give a new entry point to the brand while sensibly utilising technology available from elsewhere in the Stellantis empire. The original Mito, launched in 2008, went off sale in 2019 in light of declining demand for three-door models.
At the time, European boss Roberta Zerbi explained: “The Mito is a three-door and people are choosing more and more five-door cars.” The upcoming supermini, then, will inevitably have five doors to maximise sales and could sit on one of two platforms.
The first is that of the new Fiat 500, which was developed primarily for the electric city car and will need to be used elsewhere to justify its development. However, the e-CMP platform used by the Peugeot e-208 and Vauxhall Corsa-e is more likely, as its proportions are evidently ideal for superminis.
The new Mito will be electric-only as Alfa Romeo ramps up to ditch internal combustion entirely from 2025. It is likely to echo the set-up of the e-208 and Corsa-e, which use a 50kWh battery and one 134bhp motor for about 210 miles of range.
Alfa Romeo UK boss Damien Dally stopped short of confirming that a new supermini is coming but said: “The brand has a history of selling compact sporty cars, like the Alfasud, and it’s an interesting area of the market that’s high-volume and gives us a much wider offering.
“The Mito was a three-door car, but if it had had five doors, the market would have been so much bigger. The next step in the path to electrification is full electric, and compact cars blend well [with that] and use the car that’s most suitable to your needs.”
Pigounakis flagged the shrinking number of cars sold across the industry and the need to look at other avenues, despite MG’s recent success.
“A lot of that shrinking volume is down to Covid, but it will be interesting to see whether the market ever comes fully back,” he said.
The MG ZS EV is currently part of the fleet of leading car-sharing firm Zipcar.