Long-term wrap-up: Our Alfa Romeo 156 goes to a better home

Our Alfa Romeo left us a few months ago. After all, while it was registered under my name, I was sharing ownership with two other guys and just holding the car for a friend until it found a buyer.

Of course, we never did find a private buyer. While in our possession, the car had developed a fault where it used to turn off at inopportune moments, because my daft co-owner “friends” thought it’d be a good idea to test the top speed on a car with more than 250,000 km on the clock. Somewhere in Liwa, in the middle of nowhere, they managed to hit an indicated 250 kph, then promptly stalled and came to a halt on the side of a deserted road. Anyway, after enduring a few lustful stares from passing sweaty men in pickup trucks, they managed to cool down the car and get it started again before they ended up as someone’s pet monkeys. Thankfully, I wasn’t personally there to witness the idiocy.

After that, the car never ran right, stalling at the most random times, and killing any prospect of a private sale unless we fixed it. Previous offers were never above Dhs 3500 anyway, so we had to decide whether to put some money into it and fix the issue for very little gain in resale value, or sell it to the only independent Alfa garage in town. The latter had offered us Dhs 3000 earlier, and at this point, it seemed to be the best bet to get rid of this high-mileage mistreated car.

After selling the car to the garage, we later heard that they fixed the MAF sensor to eliminate the stalling, re-did the upholstery and door rubbers, and fixed a whole bunch of other things. The owner told us it would cost too much if we tried to fix it up ourselves and paid for labour. They were supposed to resell the car, but they still have it around at their garage, used as a company car, last we heard.

The manual Alfa Romeo 156 V6 is still a great car, nowhere near the level of a BMW 3-Series of that era, but still very unique and enjoyable to drive in its own way. If you do buy one, try finding a cleaner version than the one we had. And don’t give it to your idiot friends.

Original Mileage When Bought: 250,010 km
Latest Mileage To Date: 266,500 km
Latest Average Fuel Economy: 10.5 litres/100 km
Cost of Latest Problems: Dhs 0
Cost of Latest Maintenance: Dhs 0

Total Non-Fuel Running Cost Since Bought: Dhs 0

Read all 2003 Alfa Romeo 156 long-term updates