It’s been a wee while since I’ve written anything in here but it has been business as usual chopping and changing cars at an alarming rate. I still have the Rover 216, and that’s a car I’m never likely to sell. But I’ll come back to the other cars at a later stage. The object of this post is to write about what has (twin) sparked my blog writing back into life.
I’ve been an Italian car licker for longer than I care to remember – actually thirty years ago this year. My Dad had a long line of brilliant Italian cars which started off with an Uno 70S and a Tipo DGT. My first car was an Uno 45S, and between me and my wife we’ve owned 13 Italian cars up until the car featured here. So far, though, they’ve all been Fiats. What has alluded me so far is an Alfa Romeo. Just saying the name evokes the usual journalistic clichés of passion, soul and spaghetti. It’s a brand that has resonated with me since I was a small boy – one of my first toy cars was an Alfasud Sprint. Alfa have had their fair share of ups and downs (I am going out of my way to not mention the R word that crops up in just about every piece ever written about Alfa, Fiat or Lancia) and have launched a few stinkers over the years. But my God have they launched some utterly beautiful machines, too. The sound of a deliciously smooth yet racy Busso V6 or the celebrated raspy twin cam is enough to send me all gooey eyed and weak at the knees. Similarly, if I see an Alfetta GTV, a 105 series GTV, Alfasud Sprint or an old Duetto I instantly need some time to myself.
I worked in aftersales at an Alfa and Fiat dealer for best part of 10 years so have seen how bad they could be. However, I’ve also seen how bloody brilliant they can be, too. So, why haven’t I owned one, yet? Mainly because I subscribe to the kind of motoring dubbed as Bangernomics. So my idea of a Bangernomics friendly Italian car automatically defaults to Punto, of which I’ve had four. A V6 Alfa or Twin Spark is likely to need a bit more love and money than someone on a Bangernomics budget can throw at it. But does that mean it rules out Alfa ownership altogether?
No, not at all. Cars such as the 147 and 156 are at such a low ebb pricing wise that they’re pretty much disposable motoring, which in one sense is a good thing as they can picked up for next to nothing. But it’s a shame as 147s and 156s are such good cars, why on earth would you buy one to run it into the ground? To satisfy both sides of that coin, we’ve bought a 156 JTD for pocket money in terms of car prices. The purchase price satisfies our Bangernomics budget, yet it’s a car that deserves to be maintained and have some coin thrown at it.
A very good friend who we’ll call nameless and will remain Craig Cheetham contacted me to tell me he had “the ideal car”. I loved the idea, but Mrs Captain Misery said no and that was that. The car in question was a Fiat Multipla 105 JTD ELX and I loved the idea of owning it – the perfect family vehicle and would satisfy Mrs Captain Misery’s mourning for her dear departed Vauxhall Meriva. But it was a resounding NO. A few weeks passed and Craig contacts me again with “I’ve got the perfect car for you” and Mrs Captain Misery said yes and that was that. A few weeks later we had an Alfa 156 JTD on the driveway.
The 156 has been around since 1997 and changed Alfa’s fortunes for the better overnight. Sadly, it changed Alfa’s fortunes for the worse overnight, too. I’ll gloss over the minuses to wax lyrical about the 156 for a moment if I may. It remains the best looking saloon car of the last twenty five years. I still maintain that no saloon car since has looked so right and so damned pretty. Even the facelift didn’t ruin the looks. Then there’s the interior, and yes if you were Autocar you could complain about plastics used on some of it, but come on, how often do you stroke the dashboard when you’re driving? It still looks utterly fabulous from the cowled dials housing the rev counter and speedo, to the dials in the centre console, all angled toward the driver. It’s very driver focused and a lovely place to sit. It’s also easy to find a comfortable driving position and the seats are great.
I could go on for hours about the exterior styling. I have done before and some people have died of boredom as I spoke. So I’ll just leave it at the exterior is a work of art. Even this one, which is a bit of a ten yard car if I’m honest, still looks good. Being a sixteen year old 156 means there’s literally many shades of red and there’s the odd bit of lacquer peel here and there. But to be honest, the exterior and interior wear the 181,000 miles pretty well.
Then there’s the way these things drive. The front wheel drive chassis has always handled well, with the most balanced sweet spot of the range being the 2.0 Twin Spark. The V6 is still a gem and to be honest, the diesels are hardly horrible to drive, in fact quite the contary. Ours is the low powered 8 valve 120bhp 1.9 turbo diesel, so it’s basically the same engine as fitted to Bravos, Stilos, Doblo vans, Multiplas and Vauxhall Vectras. Even so, whilst not being the fastest thing on four wheels and sometimes it lags more than George W. Bush’s brain, keep the turbo spooling and the performance is more than acceptable and it can upset quite a few [insert German generic saloon here]. You still get the pin sharp turn in and the delightfully weighted and communicative steering. The downside is the ride is a bit crashy over British road surfaces (what have the Romans ever done for us?) and the turning circle is worse than the Starship Enterprise.
Now, being a sixteen year old Alfa with (at the time of purchase) 177,000 miles on it, there were a few issues which I was informed about prior to buying it. I spent a good day on the paintwork polishing and waxing it getting it back to only 37 shades of red and bringing a bit of the shine back. The heater motor had packed up, which is a common fault and an easy fix on a 156. A replacement second hand heater motor from eBay for less than 20 quid was obtained and fitted. The surprise came when I switched the climate control on and found there to be ice-cold air through the vents – the air conditioning worked!
The battery was past its best, so a new battery was fitted, though this proved a bit of a worry as the alarm fob button on the key doesn’t work. Armed with a memory saver – a device which plugs into the EOBD port and connects to a car battery thus allowing you to keep radio codes and ECU settings etc – the battery was replaced. Upon replacing the battery I noticed the turbo hose was split, so a new one was sourced for £15. There was also an intermittent cold start problem and the glow plug warning light keept flashing. A new set of glow plugs were fitted by a very good local garage and solved that problem. However, an intermittant hot start problem developed. The most obvious culprit was the crankshaft position sensor, so a new one was sourced and eventually fitted and so far, so good. A cracked windscreen and a set of wiper blades were also sorted. In the new year, I’ll treat the 156 to a service.
As the mileometer is close to ticking over to 181,000 miles, we’ve put 3000 miles on it since purchasing it just over three months ago. None of the running repairs have cost much to put right, either. It’s great to drive, stunning to behold (if you ignore the paint fade), lovely to be in and bloody hell is it economical. Oh, and it has also had its 15 minutes of fame, too, being a feature car in Retro Cars magazine.
The best thing? It’s one of those cars that both Mrs Captain Misery and me look back at and smile when we walk away from it. And, at long last we have an Alfa on the driveway. Italian car number 14 is here to stay, we hope. For an imperfect car bought on a Bangernomics budget, it’s one that feels a bit special and you can’t buy that.
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