Opinion Time Alfa 155

Front wheel drive girls car.

Fraser

couldn't have put it better myself.

unless you get a Q4... niiice :)

Popcorn and beer at the ready....

The driver of the 155 must have been a nun.....

gorgeous cars

really great buy if you find a good one

why not look at 156's as well there going for peanuts atm

used to have a 156 T spark as a company car not the top of the range but you'll pick one up for peanuts and they still look great today as well as having the best engines you can find in any selection of saloon cars

try an alfa at least once, but only if you've an auto sparky in the family(joke)

No they're not.

Well, not unless you want a poverty spec steel wheeled import with crazy mileage and questionable history...... believe me, I know this and it's exactly that reason that had me buying a Passat instead.

Isn't it a Fiat Tipo in a party frock?

Which means it's got a rather nice FWD chassis.

Richard

As are all Fiat / Alfa products from that era.... including the

156/147....

I fancy the 5 pot Tipo I've seen at a few Italian car shows myself.

Alfa make nice V6 engines but most of the rest of the cars are questionable. Doubly so the electrics.

Which is actually bollocks.

4 Alfas on, I still haven't had an electrical problem.

In news:d2j156$ped$ snipped-for-privacy@news7.svr.pol.co.uk, R decided to enlighten our sheltered souls with a rant as follows

Widebody 2.0s are excellent, widebody 1.8's aren't bad. 2.5's sound lovely but aren't that quick really.

Narrow bodied ones are nothing special at all. Italian Orion.[1]

[1] apart from the Q4, which is a different thing.

So you got lucky, 2 Alfas here both with electrical problems along with 3 other people I know who have had them.

Seems to me that car-enthousiasts come in multiple versions.

You have those who consider that critic on their car is blaphemy and a direct insult to their intelligence. They will rave about performance but never extract it from the car. Any fault, how obvious it is, is vigourisly denied as if personal honnor was involved. Tuning comes down to a big set of wheels, a 3 inch exhaust (for that special sooouuuund), a titanium shifter and polish.

An other kind are those who drive the car they enjoy like it is ment to be driven, maintain it to the highest level. Tuning means to them ameliorating, making a good product even better and testing it. Often they have more than one car because their toy is not made for the shopping run, is it?

Everybody makes out for himselve what category he is in.

My Alfa's (both 75 TS) experienced both the same problems and apart from the exhaust header curb being the lowest point (thus hitting first the ground) and the rubber donuts in the drivetrain, most were electrical. Off course when you toss out the diagnostic console and the door contacts a lot of the electricale gremlins are gone.

Why the relais for the fan is not in the relais box but hidden at the front fender, readily avaiable for heat and water : who knows but an Italian?

Other problems were dealer related: very hard to find a decent one. A faulty sparks wire was but discovered by the third dealer (but the others had changed allready twice the Motronic and charged 500 UKP for an not repaired car)

My Alfa's were driven hard. Uprated suspension, lightened flywheel, sticky tires, supersprint exhaust, modified Motronic resulting in 140 HP at the rear wheels, raced one more than one occasion (rallye and track). Both were written off: one on a highway at rather high speed by my brother (escaping with a broken nose and leg and some minor bruises), the other due to a slip on black ice at about 50kph (went through a wall with it).

Back to the 155: never ownded one, driven a few (2.0 TS and 2.5 V6 which was given for a week to me as a test). Front wheel drive and not inspiring. Same rattle as in older Alfa's and other Fiats. Handed the 2.5 V6 in after 3 days.

Q4? "Niiice" a poster claimed. I suppose it is nice being a bad copy of the Delta Integrale (30 HP down on power) and also a horrendous money pit. My personal experiance with 2 friends who bought them brand new is that parts are very expensif, break often and are never readily available (as in waiting 3 months for the rear diff). Neither of them kept the car more than 2 years (of which several months the car was in the workshop).

And no: the Q4 wasn't up against the Cosworth for which all the goodies were/are readily available.

One of the Q4 owners mentionned (being a Italian) couldn't accept that his Q4 was so bad and bought the latest version Integrale. It seemed a question of national pride :)

Very niiice car, very yellow, looked like a menacing guard dog in the neons before the restaurant, went like a bullet when it went, ate clutches (every

15.000 km). Along with the gearbox my pal's spirit was broken: he bought a 911 Porsche. He claims that his running costs were cut by 50%. Proudly sports the Italian flag on the Porsche though.

Just my 2 eurocents.

Tom De Moor

In news: snipped-for-privacy@news.telenet.be, Tom De Moor decided to enlighten our sheltered souls with a rant as follows

Indeed they do.

Ah, I'm not a fan of big wheels and loud exhausts, but I am a fan of more power. As for criticisism of certain cars, I can only go off personal experience. All my Alfas have been reliable, whereas every BMW I've known has been bloody awful. That's how I see it, so that's how I say it.

Indeed, although it's handy if it'll do the shopping run as well.. Occasionally.

Aye, the "AlfaControle" panel is awful, but that's been the only fault with any 75 I've known.

That's what workshop manuals are for.

Ah, stealerships.. don't get me started.

Oops.

Wide or narrow body? Wide are fine, although build quality isn't spectacular it's better than the earlier ones.

I had a 155 Q4, and it was a great car for doing long, high speed runs in. Quiet, subtle, reasonably quick and handled well. I never had any problems with parts prices. As always with Fiat group stuff, if you find out what it's shared with, you tend to find the parts price drops accordingly. Integrale 16v front brake pads, for example - £115 + vat from Lancia, or for the identical pads as fitted to a Tipo 16v £19.00 inc vat.

I know, I've had a Cosworth as well, and two Integrales.

Integrale clutches only last 10,000 miles. It's an Integrale thing. How he managed to kill an Integrale gearbox is beyond me. Integrale 'boxes are tough as old boots. I've snapped many an Integrale driveshaft / cv joint and

*never* had a problem with a 'grale gearbox. In fact, I've only ever known the 'boxes on HF 4WD's to go noisy, and that's normally only in 3rd due to the pasting 3rd gear tends to get. 'Grale gearboxes are considerably stronger. Stronger than 4wd Cosworth boxes, that's for sure.

Some Ferrari clutches only last 6,000 miles, but it wouldn't stop me from buying one.

My "AlfaControle" works fine - the only fault (well, when I say fault, I'd say it's an improvement on the original design spec....) is that the large red warning light doesn't work. The little LEDs do work perfectly, though :-)

A bit of judicious snipping and that thread suddenly becomes quite funny.

Heh, yeah.

I wouldn't call it a 'fault' rather an 'improvement' :-)

(You have no idea how annoying the large red light is)

Maybe, but he'd just got out of this

Wasn't pushing it though, never floored it, we were just travelling swiftly in tandem.

-- R