Every so often a car comes along that has some flaw to it that you just cannot train your brain to ignore, and which therefore rankles. It makes you think, “why did they do that?”, and no satisfactory answer comes to mind. And when you’re paying more than £30,000 for something that’s supposed to make you feel good, that’s a bit of a shame.

So it is with the new Alfa Romeo Junior Elettrica. This is the first all-electric launch for the storied brand and, on the whole, it’s a pretty, smart, competent little thing, if a bit short on interior space. There are nice design touches all around this electro-baby, as we’ve come to expect. The designers have clearly been given their head.

The 18in alloy wheels on the more expensive variants, for example, called “Petali” for obvious reasons. There are strange “fading” vertical red stripes running down each seat, as if someone has had a go with a spray can. The central 10.25in screen, with the satnav and other data, is a little skew-whiff and angled towards the driver, like in something from the Seventies. The sharply cut-off “Kamm” tail is distinctive, reminiscent of the celebrated Alfasud and another throwback to the days of Italian automotive brio, even if it also looks like the latest Kia Sportage (no bad thing).

On the prow, you’ll find triple headlights, like on the old Alfa 159 and, like the blessed 159, the rear door handle is also concealed to throw off an Alfa coupe vibe (because Alfa no longer makes a proper coupe. Or a spider, for that matter).

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All in all, an attractive package, and as distinctive as it can be when the main mechanical, electrical and electronic components are shared with the Junior’s many, many siblings in the Stellantis group – Peugeot e-2008, Fiat 600e, Jeep Avenger, DS3 Crossback, and Vauxhall Mokka. This, you see, is how volume car makers try to survive these days – by composing more variations on a theme than Paganini.

Aside from some specials, they all come with the same battery pack, electric motor, controls, suspension, brakes and the like, and (unsurprisingly) they all drive in the same manner. The Avenger has some modest concessions to the brand’s off-road ability, while the steering in the Fiat feels less direct than in the Alfa; but that may be my imagination.

On paper, their performance and economy are nearly identical and it mostly feels like that on the road. They all corner and brake reassuringly, offer reasonable comfort and roughly the same interior accommodation, with a 200-mile real-world range. The “Veloce” version of the Alfa Romeo Junior is, to be fair, a genuine stab at an electric performance car, but it’s another 10 grand, making it a niche-within-a-niche product. Later in the year, there’ll be a mild hybrid petrol version, by the way.

So, on the whole, which Stellantis small crossover “B” segment contender you plump for is largely a matter of taste. They’re all broadly competitive but an MG ZS will be cheaper, bigger and go further on a charge. Which matters.

Taste brings us, at last, to the Alfa Junior’s fatal flaw – a very weird grille. You can’t get away from it because it disfigures the car’s face. You can see that they were trying to do something different here, by taking the traditional Alfa shield-shaped grille and filling it with a cutout of the Alfa badge, with its cross and serpent. The problem is that everything is rendered in matt black and it just looks like something has fallen off the front.

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Fortunately, on the forthcoming hybrid, they’ve opted for some big Alfa Romeo script as seen on racing cars in the 1930s, which actually looks very charming. But the cookie-cutter electric Alfa Junior grille seems like a faux pas. It’s hardly as venal a sin as the Ford Edsel, the SsangYong Rodius, say, or the grotesque Tesla Cybertruck, but it’s all the more upsetting – yes, upsetting – because we expect our Alfas to look nice, if nothing else.

A strange blend then, this Alfa Junior, and a car that had a difficult birth. You may recall that the Italian government objected to Stellantis/Alfa’s original plan to call it the Alfa Romeo Milano because it’s manufactured in Tychy, Poland. From that unwanted publicity, the world became a little more conscious that this new little Alfa is more or less a Polish Peugeot. There’s absolutely nothing the matter with that, of course, but there’s no escalating that there’s a lot wrong with the front end.