If there’s one thing you learn about the car industry after 300 years of covering the latest news, it’s that it’s never too early to start teasing your next car. 

Even if the prospect of something better on the distant horizon puts people off buying the poor little car you already have on sale. 

Which brings us neatly to the news that Alfa Romeo has released a teaser image for its new Tonale replacement that’s set to arrive in 2028. 

The car is being billed only as a “new C-SUV”, which is bang in the territory occupied by the current Tonale – but will the new car keep the name? It’s not the most immediately evocative badge in the Alfa back catalogue… 

We know now too that the car will be based on the STLA Medium platform, which is the engineering base for all of parent company Stellantis’s future hopes and dreams. Other cars built on there include the Jeep Compass, Citroen C5 Aircross, plus the Peugeot 3008 and 5008 models.

It does make us think that the next Tonale (or whatever it turns out to be) will be slightly larger than the current version (above). The Tonale was introduced on sale back in 2022, after delays following the post-pandemic semiconductor chip crisis (hey, remember that?). 

It’s probably fair to say that the Tonale – name after a road pass in the Italian Alps – hasn’t captured the public imagination in quite the way that Alfa bosses might otherwise have liked. 

The final snippet of interesting news about the new car is that Alfa – the brand, let us remind ourselves, that was going to be fully electric by 2027 – is going to pop the new car on sale with “multi-energy powertrains”, which means electric, PHEV and possibly something else.

Like a jigsaw puzzle, Alfa will slowly reveal other parts of the car until we get to see full thing at some point in late 2027 before it goes on sale in 2028.