Alfa Romeo extended warranty: cost, coverage and plans

Alfa Romeo extended warranty coverage

Alfa Romeo doesn’t actually have its own extended warranty program. Instead, the official, factory-backed extended warranties for Alfas come from Mopar, the official parts, service and customer care provider for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, now part of Stellantis. That means it covers models from Chrysler, Dodge, Ram, Jeep, FIAT and Alfa Romeo.

Mopar also supplies all of the official extended warranties for those brands, dubbing them Mopar Vehicle Protection plans. You can get plans for new and used vehicles, but Mopar defines these terms in a way that you might not expect:

• “New vehicle” plans are available for any vehicle still within three years or 36,000 miles of when it was brand new. (You may have to pay an additional surcharge once your vehicle passes one year or 12,000 miles, though.)
• “Pre-owned” plans, which are generally more expensive, are available to any Stellantis vehicle that’s under 10 years old and passes an inspection by a dealership.

Car warranty terms are usually stated in units of time and mileage. The warranty ends whenever either limit is reached.

As for term lengths, new vehicle plans can run anywhere from five years/60,000 miles to eight years/unlimited miles. Pre-owned vehicle plans can last between one year/12,000 miles and five years/unlimited miles. However, these advertised terms can be misleading.

Term lengths for Mopar’s new vehicle plans start from your vehicle’s in-service date, which is when it was delivered to its original owner. That means they will overlap with your four-year/50,000-mile factory warranty until it expires, so you’re effectively paying for coverage you won’t use. On the other hand, term lengths for pre-owned vehicle plans start on the date you buy your warranty, so you actually get the amount of coverage you see in your term limits.

» LEARN: What does a car warranty cover?

Alfa Romeo extended warranty benefits

Mopar Vehicle Protection plans come with these additional benefits:

• Rental car allowances of up to $45 per day (for up to five days) to help cover the cost of a rental car or taxi while your Alfa Romeo is in the shop
• 24/7 roadside assistance of up to $100 per occurrence, which includes flat-tire changes (if you have a spare), towing, fuel delivery (up to two gallons), battery jump-starts and locksmith services
• Trip interruption protection of up to $1,000 to help you afford lodging and meals if your Alfa Romeo breaks down more than 100 miles from home and the repairs are within your warranty coverage

(Previously, Mopar restricted roadside assistance and trip interruption protection to new vehicle plans, but they now come with pre-owned vehicle plans too. You may still see references to the way it used to be online, but a representative from Zeigler Auto Group confirmed the policy change for us.)

Overall, these are above-average benefits for a manufacturer’s extended warranty program. $45 likely isn’t enough to cover the cost of a rental car in 2024, but it’s still more than the $35 most other automakers offer. The trip interruption protection may also be nice to have, considering Alfa Romeos may require long repair times in some cases.

» READ: Where can you use an extended auto warranty?

Alfa Romeo extended warranty plans

Mopar offers multiple extended warranty plans, including traditional extended warranty options and specialty coverages, like tire and wheel plans, appearance plans and plans for leased vehicles. We’ll focus on Mopar’s more traditional extended warranty options in this article.

Coverage options are identical for both new and pre-owned vehicle plans, with the exception of the Added Care plan, which is exclusive to pre-owned vehicles. Curiously, Added Care is also Mopar’s only coverage option with a mileage cap (150,000 miles).

Check out the chart for a detailed breakdown of which component groups each plan covers and to what extent they cover the parts in that group.

According to a representative from Zeigler Auto Group, a wholesale retailer of Mopar Vehicle Protection plans, the vast majority of customers end up choosing Maximum Care because it covers nearly six times the parts that Added Care Plus covers for a disproportionately small increase in cost.

Powertrain Care Plus plans almost never sell because other Stellantis vehicles are already protected by five-year/60,000-mile factory powertrain warranties (Alfa powertrains are covered for four years/50,000 miles). As for Added Care and Added Care Plus, the only times the representative recalled selling those plans was to customers on strict budgets who only wanted to protect a specific part, like the Ferrari-sourced V-6 in the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio.

Alfa Romeo extended warranty cost

One nice thing about Mopar extended warranties is that you can buy one online in under two minutes. Most factory-backed extended warranties can only be purchased from the dealership. That means you have to call multiple dealerships and negotiate with each, only to still pay hidden commissions and fees in the end.

See extended warranty costs for specific Alfa Romeo models:

• Alfa Romeo Guilia

Because Mopar Vehicle Protection plans are available online, though, you can find them for wholesale prices from companies like Zeigler Auto Group. In our experience, wholesale prices tend to be around 40% less than you’d pay at a dealership. You can also get instant quotes without giving up any personal information.

While you’ll still have to get a dealer inspection to activate any pre-owned vehicle plan, the ability to buy the warranty itself online is a huge time- and money-saver.

Mopar Vehicle Protection plan costs for Alfa Romeos

Here are some of the quotes we collected from Zeigler Auto Group for various Alfa Romeo vehicles. Note that prices don’t include tax and factor in a $100 deductible.

The average cost of an extended auto warranty is around $1,000 per year of coverage, so it’s clear that Alfa Romeo extended warranties cost more than average. But they don’t necessarily cost as much as we were expecting, given Alfa’s reputation for reliability and high cost of ownership.

Alfa Romeo extended warranty terms and conditions

Most of the terms and conditions in Mopar’s Vehicle Protection plan contracts are pretty standard fare for extended auto warranties, and we’ve broken down some of the key things you should know below. That said, it’s always best to read your extended auto warranty agreement line by line before signing.

What’s not covered by an Alfa Romeo extended warranty?

Normal exclusions for an extended auto warranty apply, so negligence, misuse and missed maintenance intervals can all result in denied claims. Quadrifoglio owners should know that track and competitive use is not covered.

Your Mopar Vehicle Protection plan also won’t cover:

• Wear-and-tear parts, like worn-out brakes or clutches
• Damage from accidents, vandalism or weather
• Unauthorized repairs or modifications

According to a Mopar Vehicle Protection claims officer we spoke with, the No. 1 reason for denied claims is unauthorized aftermarket parts. Mopar can’t legally void your warranty simply because you installed a cold air intake or a lift kit, but if those parts cause other parts to misbehave, neither will be covered by your warranty. However, he did say that Mopar-certified parts installed by a Mopar-certified dealership would be covered.

Alfa Romeo extended warranty alternatives

Mopar may be the official provider of Alfa Romeo’s extended warranties, but it’s not your only option if you want to cover your Alfa Romeo with an extended warranty. Third-party extended warranty companies can often offer coverage that’s similar to what manufacturers offer for less money.

We collected quotes from two warranty companies (Endurance and olive) to see how they compared with what we got from Mopar for similar situations —we’ll let the results speak for themselves.

Unfortunately, neither company was keen on protecting Alfa Romeo vehicles. olive told us that it simply doesn’t offer warranties for Alfa Romeos, while the best Endurance could do was over $9,500 for 25,000 miles less coverage. (Endurance wasn’t interested in covering our example Giulia Quadrifoglio either.)

You may have better luck with other warranty companies (we’ve seen quotes vary significantly with little apparent reason), but we wouldn't be surprised if Mopar offers the best rates on these niche performance cars, even if they’re only just worth it in the long term.

» MORE: How to choose an extended car warranty

Is an Alfa Romeo extended warranty worth it?

A Mopar Vehicle Protection plan could be worth it for an Alfa Romeo, but let’s take a step back to explain why. In general, an extended auto warranty is more likely to be worth it if:

• You drive a vehicle with below-average expected reliability.
• It costs less than you expect to spend on the repairs it would cover.
• A surprise repair bill would ruin your finances.
• You don’t have a problem with paying a few thousand dollars for extra peace of mind.

Since we can’t predict how the third and fourth bullets apply to your situation, we’ll focus on the first two to help you decide.

J.D. Power didn’t rank Alfa Romeo in its 2024 or 2023 U.S. Vehicle Dependability Study, but in 2022, the brand ranked 29th out of 32 automakers with 245 problems per 100 vehicles. Consumer Reports didn’t rank Alfa Romeo in its most recent ranking either, but the outlet did say that it “expects” the Giulia, Stelvio and Tonale to be less reliable than other vehicles.

As for the expected cost of repairs, data was hard to come by. Neither RepairPal nor YourMechanic had calculated an average annual repair cost for these vehicles at the time of publishing, presumably due to a lack of data.

However, Edmunds estimates that, by its fifth year (when its factory warranty runs out), an Alfa Romeo Giulia will cost around $1,400 a year in repairs. For context, that’s on par with the BMW 3 Series and more than double the expected yearly repair cost of the Lexus IS.

If you have significant savings, getting stuck with a massive repair bill might not be a huge worry, but if you don’t, it could be ruinous. A ConsumerAffairs investigation found that most drivers surveyed couldn’t afford to pay cash for a $1,000 repair bill, and 13% of respondents simply had no way to handle a bill that large — even with credit.

Editor-in-chief of Car Coach Reports and member of ConsumerAffairs’ advisory panel, Lauren Fix, explains that “aftermarket extended warranties can cover potential issues that can help cover expensive repair issues” when it comes to maintaining an Alfa Romeo.

Circling back, the cost of a Maximum Care plan for our sample Giulia was around $1,200 per year of added coverage (remember, the factory warranty overlaps with the first four years of a new vehicle plan’s term). Once you factor in the cost of your deductible ($100 per visit in this example), you’re roughly breaking even.

It’s up to you if you think warranty coverage is worth the cost in cases like this. On one hand, your money is tied up in a warranty that may not be useful if nothing goes wrong with your Alfa Romeo. On the other hand, you’re likely spending the same amount of money either way, and with a warranty, you have protection against any massive repair bills your vehicle might incur if something major breaks.

» MORE: Pros and cons of extended auto warranties