Alfa Romeo 159 JTDM | Shed of the Week
Shed value doesn't have to mean Shed looks
Some cars hardly ever appear in the selection of SOTW candidates that Shed puts forward to PH's Star Chamber of stern-faced judges on a weekly basis. Why is that? Sometimes of course it will be down to rarity. You just don't see that many Hotchkiss Gregoires on the roads these days, so the chances of you seeing one in Shed of the Week are about on a par with the chances of Mrs Shed cutting her toenails on anything other than a biannual basis.
Another possible reason for the non-appearance of certain cars here is that owners like them and are annoyingly refusing to sell them at Shed's qualifying price of £1,500 or less. When it comes to Alfa 159s, that's the only conclusion you can draw because rarity doesn't come into it. They were on sale for six years from 2005. As at the end of 2010, just before sales stopped, 6,142 saloons and 2,331 Touring estates had been sold in the UK. Looking at the numbers of 159s running around on British roads in 2020, even if we restrict it to the JTDM diesels there are still around 1,100 saloons and just under 500 estates left.
Compare that to the number of sub-£1,500 3 Series BMWs from the same period that you'll find on sale today. Obviously there were more of those in the first place, but in relative terms it still seems odd that this is only the second Alfa 159 ever featured in Shed of the Week. Is the 159 the best kept secret on the cheap used car market?
You do get a lot for your £1,295, not least bucketloads of handsome. 159 styling was a 'Giugiaro in collaboration with Centro Stile Alfa Romeo' affair, which may well mean nothing more than the non-committal raising of one haughty eyebrow when the 159 drawings were waved in front of the great man as he delicately balanced a dod of pesto sauce on an exquisitely shaped piece of pasta. The backroom machinations of the Italian motor industry mean that we'll very likely never know the truth, but Shed hopes that whoever was responsible for the final version was given a bonus case of Valpolicella that Christmas because this pre-'08 facelift 159 still looks great 15 years after launch, and especially in this colour scheme of black with tan leather and silver alloys.
Our shed is a mid-spec Lusso rather than a top-spec Ti, but you can see from the ad that you're not short-changed on the important stuff. Price-wise, the nearest 159 Lusso that Shed managed to find outside this one on PH Classifieds was a silver one with 57,000 more miles on the clock, four fewer months on the MOT and another £55 on the price. Which perhaps goes to show that you get all the best cars on PH Classifieds.
Although the 159 was arguably not such a driving treat as the 156 that preceded it, it was a lot stronger and stiffer, albeit also quite a bit heavier - 1,525kg for the 1.9 JDTM versus 1,270kg for the equivalent 156 JTD. The 200hp 2.4 JTDM diesel engine was a fine unit, especially with a 260hp remap, but many considered the 159 with the 1.9 JTDM lump to be a better drive and some even thought it was the best all-round 159 you could buy as long as you didn't mind the slightly odd mix of a heavy feel combined with Alfa's trademark quick steering, and you weren't afflicted by thrown timing belts, clogged EGR valves, or frangible swirl flaps - though in fairness you could get the last two of those in any older (but not too old) diesel and it wasn't a hard one to sort. You didn't really want the 6-speed Q-Tronic Aisin auto gearbox in a 159 JTDM, and this one doesn't have it, so that's good, but it has to be said that the manual box (the GM M32 that was also used on the Astra and Vectra) doesn't have a spotless record for strength either.
One PHer's mate who worked at an Alfa dealer told him that 159s were the worst Alfas ever for warranty claims. There was electrical glitchery. Back windows had a habit of not going up and down like they were supposed to, ignition keys weren't always as good at activating and de-activating the immobiliser as they should have been, and the headlight switch on the left-hand stalk didn't always turn the lights off. That last one is a 20 minute fix with a soldering iron. Driveshafts and suspension parts (particularly upper wishbones and coil springs) do break.
Rust is an old Alfa trope, but more recent cars like the 159 went a long way towards changing that view. Although the front subframe wasn't immune to corrosion there's been no mention of rust so far on this car's MOT record. What issues there have been have mainly been consumables. The May test for our shed had advisories for some damage to the n/s lower windscreen and a non-excessive oil leak, hardly enough to put off the determined buyer who would quite rightly want to have a thing of such great beauty on the drive.
But that's not to say I'd buy this one, not even with your money. Everybody I know that's had an Alfa Romeo has had a terrible experience with it. "They're not THAT bad", people say - well, OK, I do admit I don't know anybody whose Alfa Romeo has paid somebody to kill their spouse and children.
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