Looking at a car for Mrs Muu (well me really, but cloaked as a car for her) and thinking a Alfa 159 is tasty enough.
8k gets me a sub 40k, 2007/8 159 with either a Petrol 2.2 or Diesel 2.4 (5 pot, strokes chin).
Normally I’d be first of the queue to post a glib post about bits falling off, but really are they that bad? It’d do fuck all miles, and I just want something more interesting than the anodyne audi or boring ‘SE’ BMW.
Anyone here own(ed) one?
They certainly look the part.
Just recently sold my 159 at 3 years old. (It was a 159 3.2 v6 Ti Q4 Qtronic.)
It was by far the most unrealiable car i have ever owned. When it worked it was excellent and i loved it. But a few times I nearly acted out the Basil fawlty sketch where he hit that old car with the tree branch. THe biggest problem was that the dealer were useless and no one holds parts so every issue took at least two trips to the dealers.
To be fair most of the issues i had were manufacturing defects that will hopefully have been solved if you buy an 08 car.
A list of a the big issues i can remember (18 trips to the dealer in 3 years!!):
-Air con drain pipe not fitted correctly so rear footwell filled with water
-passenger seat bolts only finger tight so seat wobbled
-leather drivers seat split on crease after only 2 years
-lamda sensor failed
-Coil pack failure, took 3 trps to dealer and 4 weeks to fix!!
-power steering reservoir replaced to fix groaning noise
-reversing sensor fell into bumper first time i washed the car
-Aerial cable replaced due to screw going through it when roof linning installed
-radio randomly turing on and off
A couple of other little things, the 08 model year cars had some improvements (so a slightly newer car will be better) easiest way to check is the alfa badge on the back is a button to open the boot on the newer cars. Also you can’t turn off the annoying beep (that sounds like a microwave oven) when you lock/unlock the car. Also the the hazard lights flash when you brake hard (but it comes on way to easily) so when spirited driving your flashing the hazards all the time.
After all that I loved the car (but i’m glad i don’t have to walk to the car every day thinking what wouldn’t be working today!!!)
interesting info there
I really dont want another audi, and GTIs etc are just overpriced especially when used.
I can imagine the sloppy build is very annoying though