Hi all
Really fancy an alfa 156 estate anyone got one/had one?
Looking at the diesel for economy
Good buy or nightmare? heard the rep for being unreliable
Any help appreciated

Mine (petrol 1.8) blows oil out of the back randomly every 50 miles.
Air con doesn’t work.
Is full of crisp packets and mud.
It’s not very fast.
The seats smell funny.
It has a cracked windscreen since I poured near boiling water over it before the HTN Winter Sprinter.

You have to understand with Alfa’s you’re buying something that is definitely going to break down and cost lots in servicing and depreciation.

I love my car.

I had one from new (one of the first 156 sportwagons into the country, natch). As Brant and Jeremy Clarkson agree, there’s something special about Alfas. I loved mine too, but after 4 years the electrics were playing up and the suspension getting clonky. I’m certainly glad I bought the extended warranty too as I got through quite a few things culminating with the timing belt breaking and putting all 16V into the cylinder head. Lucky it had been religiously serviced by a main dealer so they had little choice but to fix it under warranty. I’d still buy another one, but drive a soul-less Golf at the moment for the (perceived by me anyway) reliability and residuals (the Alfa went for £2.5k after 5 years. Was £19k new).

there IS something about Alfas but an ESTATE.

good god.

I could put up with the miserable reliability for a sporty hatch but I think for a practical car you’d be better off looking at….a practical car

I loved my Alfa 🙁

Google alfa 156 crash test, then wonder why it was never sent for an Ncap rating.

I’d still have one though.

Oh, and ignore the warning lights on the dashboard, they’re nothing but a measure of how long your journey has been.

So long as they’ve been serviced by mechanics that care – those who understand that a 13mm spanner is not a a 1/2 spanner, that you’re meant to replace nylocks if you remove them then then they’re ok. This probably excludes anyone who works in an official Alfa or fiat dealer.

There were several diesel engines: a 1.9 based originally on the Peugeot XUD which is quite good or very good in JTDM form – 150bhp and a 5-cylinder 2.4. Initially the 2.4 produced 130bhp but got a new 20v head in around 2002 upping the power to 150bhp and later 170.

The 1.9 engines will run and run and run without any real problems. Very early ones with high milage might need injection pump attention. All jtdm engines are common rail and so have electric pumps.

The 2.4s are, like all diesels, very reliable. The engine bay is a tight squeeze though and access to change the cambelt is difficult. The offical way is to remove the engine but it can be done without this. Occasionally youll find some that this has been missed on. It’s a thirsty lump: I got just 25mpg from a 220brake version in the 159.

As with all blown engines, watch for blue smoke on startup and lots of smoke when being revved, indicating a knackered turbo.

The hatch is a bit small so it’s not overly practical as a bike-lugger.

Front top ball joints are a known weakness, but you can usually pick up replacements on fleaby pretty cheaply.

Handling’s great, though a little dulled by the extra weight of the diesel lumps.

Thought about a 2.0 twinspark or a 2.0 JTS? Faster, better handling, quieter, has a sadistic penchant for being revved to 7k and not too uneconomic at around 35mpg???

Forgot to mention: every journey in any alfa induces a smile.

I’ve never owned one, but I can assure you that they are awful cars. 😕

Thanks for the info chaps
I know it’s a no brainer (get a focus estate) but i’m swayed
Ah well let the conflict continue…

Had a facelift 2.4 20v JTD for 2 years. Put about 45k miles on it, it ended up a bit over 100k. I averaged the claimed 42mpg – it was obviously tested before the BS current mpg figures as my new car claims 55mpg but I get about 47 doing the same sort of trips.

Never broke down, nothing fell off, it didn’t rattle, it didn’t suffer electrical gremlins. Cost a reasonable amount to maintain, but not really any worse than friends with Audi A4s, BMW 3-series and the like at similar age/mileages. In my ownership it needed a cambelt service, a CV joint (which includes the driveshaft!), front suspension wishbones and some new hoses towards the end where they’d perished and split. The rest was just the usual routine service stuff you get on anything – and again, a lot of similar stuff has needed doing on mates’ cars.

I loved the shape, not the most useful of estates though with the rear suspension turrets intruding a lot. The boot opening is a bit tight too – for bikes I’d take the seatpost out as well as the front wheel to fit them.

Overall, good car. The petrol ones tended to have cambelts fail early (Alfa reduced the interval to 36k after a while) but the diesels seem to be solid engines. And given how little mine was worth at 5 years old, there must be some bargains to be had.

front suspension wishbones and some new hoses towards the end where they’d perished and split

after 5 years. me thinks thy foot has been shot

We had one from new, 2 litre with momo leather sports seats etc. loved it.

Currently got a 53 plate 156 2.4 Sportwagon

Dodgy electrics: heater buttons, air bag warning lights, rear windscreen wiper, window motors etc.
Replaced some of the suspension
40+ mpg
Good handling, bit front heavy being a diesel
Smallest estate bit in the world, will fit a bike in the back lying down with the fron wheel removed, just!

Find yourself a good specialist (about half the price of the useless main dealers) and have a look at the Alfa owners site Alfa Owners Site

Despite the maitenance, I love Alfas, they are a bit special

Buy one.
MAINTAIN IT (as in “check the oil weekly, service on-the-dot etc”)
Enjoy it 🙂

Honestly, they’re fine. Most of the people who bang on about how unreliable/bad they are, are just reciting what they heard “from a mate down the pub”…who himself gets all his “expert info” from AutoCrap magazine.

We had a 156GTA from new/from launch in 2002, and sold it earlier this year. The only fault in 100,000 miles of stop-start London traffic and on-the-speed-limiter Autobahn cruising was an airbag light that needed resetting once, and an alternator than started to die at around about 90,000ish. Other than that, perfect.

EDIT: The 2.0 Twin Spark isn’t massively economical. The same engine in my 146Ti gets 30mpg average. I can eek it out to 40mpg if I drive like Jesus would, but that rarely happens…

mmm… 156GTA mmm… drool slurp..

Take it it did 18mpg if you were kind?

Had a few Alfa’s in my life, beautiful cars. I’ve never had any problems worth mentioning, just usual wear and tear. Do your research, make sure you get one that’s been looked after and you’ll love one.

In my experience if you’ve owned one, you like them, if you base your car purchases on what Clarkson says, you consider them rubbish.

I have a much newer Renault Laguna Estate, and I hate it with a passion. Everything goes wrong, it’s hugely expensive to fix anything, and it’s a soulless piece of French crap.

I am looking for a 3.2 V6 GTA Sportwagon at the moment!

Take it it did 18mpg if you were kind?

Drive like a saint and you’d see 25mpg, maybe 28mpg on a motorway run. 18-22(ish)mpg a little more “normally”. But that’d be wasteful. Instead, give it beans, enjoy the noise, giggle like a child and try to ignore the MPG readout dropping to 12mpg and even single figures 😀

The only Alfa that Clarkson has owned was an early 80s GTV6. The modern Alfas are nothing like that at all.

I had a 51 plate 156 saloon, 1.6TS petrol engine. It made me smile every time I pressed the loud pedal, even though it was only a 1.6

I loved that car. Shame the engine blew twice. Cambelt just under 60k miles, luckily I was parked so it didn’t do too much damage; fixed under warranty. Then the head gasket less than 12 months later – I took it back to the place where the cambelt damage had been fixed, & they did the head gasket under warranty too (their own 12-months parts & labour warranty for the previous repair…)

Couldn’t risk a third blow up so I traded it in. Got £4k for it, at 70k miles, 3 years old. Paid £12k for it as a 3 month old ex-demonstrator.

I’d have another one – as a second car

having said that, apparently the ones with the semi-auto box had major reliability issues. Go for a manual

I had a 156 sportwagon and I loved it but it did fall to pieces

i had a 156 2.0 tspark , drove great but drank fuel. i love the looks but not the bills. i started loosing steering fluid and no one could find it so i went to the dealer and the alfa guy got it up on the ramp to show me where it would be coming from and he was right it was part of the steering rack and he said it was a common and known fault but alfa wouldnt admit it and it was gonna be big bucks to fix so i traded it in. for a focus estate as it happens lol

I’ve got a silver 03 plate 2.0 JTS Sportwagon that I was my attempt at ‘sensible’ before my firstborn arrived. Lovely, lovely car. As they say in the owners’ club “life starts at 3,000RPM” – especially around country lanes in the summer. I can easily fit a couple of muddy bikes in the back with the seats down, but it’s just getting muddy arseprints on the red momo leather seats that bothers me.

I’ve had a couple of service issues – lamba sensor, coil packs and front suspension, and the cam belt change at 36k was a bit of a sting. As someone said before, forget about main dealers and find a good, local independent garage. The guys at Rusper Alfa Romeo are a great example.

Most of all, when you get one, drive it properly. If you’re trundling around at 2,000 revs the whole time, you might as well have bought a Focus.

It’s gotta be the new 159 Sportwagon.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ALFA-ROMEO-159-Petrol-Estate_W0QQitemZ220410739388QQcmdZViewItemQQptZAutomobiles_UK?hash=item220410739388&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1683%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A1%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50