Alfa Romeo 156 Selespeed. How Good, How Bad?

[soi41]

Lately I have considering buying a Alfa 156 selespeed, IMO an absolute beauty. And cheap, you can get a 8-9 year old car with low mileage for about 350k. Been reading reviews, and here is where the confusion starts. Present/previous owners either hate it or love it. Nothing in the 3 star range, it is either 1 or 5 stars! I know Alfa used to have a reputation for making very drivable, but not high quality cars. Has anything changed? For a tecnical novice like myself, is this a car to stay away from, because of the potential headache and/or expensive maintanancebills? Btw can it only be serviced by Alfa? If yes, that means a 450 km roundtrip to Bkk for me, if something goes wrong.

I used to have a Maserati 430 biturbo, one of the early ones, bought new in 1989. When everything was working (which was not very often), driving it was better than sex. But it was eating money, and I am afraid that the Alfa will be the same story??

Thank you

[NewtoBKK]

I used to own one (a Thai manufactured 156 2.0 selespeed) from new many years ago... It was a fun car to drive back then but quality wasn't great (eg. tolerances were not tight)... However, I never had any major problems with it except for the deterioration of plastic parts within the cabin after about three years.... Fuel consumption wasn't that bad either (around 10km/l in mixed driving conditions)...

I do believe that the usual oil changes, etc... can be done by any mechanic but you would need an Alfa workshop to run diagnostics on its onboard computer for anything beyond that.

Buying a car is pretty much a personal choice so it's pretty much up to you... I wouldn't buy one though....

Good luck!

[nullx8]

hey

bad news first: you are right. there can be only 2 things. you love it or you hate it !

i as a Maserati Fan myself sure there is no better diving experience delivered by any other car brand in this world !

a Alfa Romeo gets really close to this experience.

i drove a Italian build 156 until last month.

it was a pain in the ass at first, because service is hard to come by, and as for all Italian Cars it have its own mind.

but to be completely honest, it was a hard decision to sell it, and i never regret the purchase in the first place.

there is no better way of enjoying Driving for a very small budget as in a Alfa Romeo 156.

i know alot of places where the car can be properly fixed and learned all the little trouble you can get into with the car.

the TS engines are impossible to destroy if you give them the little care they require .. (like t-belt changes)

the Selespeed Gearbox is also a point of failure, but mostly resulting of wrong and/or careless service.

all of this can be avoided by simply choose the right places to go.

so after all the car was a great experience, i added another 70.000km on the clock and had very little trouble.

well some of the trouble where always present, or took ages to resolve them, but now everything is quite transparent on what can/could happen to the car (experience has teached me that).

i would not really hesitate to buy another one.

if you decide to buy one, send me a message i can give you phone numbers of good garages, and some tipps to avoid some typical pitfalls.

[GABS]

I'm thinking of getting a 2004 156 too. Worried about the reliability of it since I've never had an Alfa before. How about maintainance and spare parts cost and availability in Bangkok? Had a E46 318iSE before, maintainance and parts prices are ridiculously high in Thailand, and I used to buy most of my parts from Singapore. But then again, the number of E46 in Thailand is pretty much more than 156, and also much more workshops specialising in BMW. My major concerns are the Selespeed gearbox and the engine.

[nullx8]

nothing to worry about the engine, they simply run forever, if you change the t-belt on time.

the gearbox is just a normal manual gearbox (nothing to worry there as well)

but the selespeed is abit tricky, but 98% of the trouble are comming from the electrics, so its (again) not so big of a problem if know where to search)

there are a handfull of good places to go in bkk .. (including the "original Alfa Romeo Dealership .. but hey are abit expensive)

serval smaller places as well to go.

so service and parts aint so much of a problem. prices are going quite moderate as well

[nullx8]

there is a Alfa-Gang on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/groups/AlfaRomeoThailnd/

everyone very frienldly and helpfoul ..

regulary take the cars for a spin, good to socialize.