Alfa Romeo 159 Sportwagon | Shed of the Week
Yes, it's a 2.4 JTDM - but probably that's a good thing...
A buzz of excitement this week in the village, and indeed in Shed’s trousers, as a new butchers opens on the High Street. As you know, Shed always likes a good butchers, but he’s especially interested in this one because of the people behind the counter. Not so much the owner Lorenzo, more his steamy Sophia Loren-lookalike wife Carlotta. Shed can certainly think of a lotta cars he’d like to get her into.
Normally he’d never blow his hard-earned cash on anything as frivolous as steak, but in a rather pathetic attempt to show her what a high roller he is he has ordered a small ribeye for the weekend. Carlotta has said that she will tenderise it for free. He’s since been kept awake by the thought of her energetically beating his meat while a light film of perspiration forms on her heaving bosom.
It turns out that Carlotta’s transport is an Alfa 159 Sportwagon Lusso in ruby red with black leather, just like the one you’re viewing here. Unlike our diesel though hers is a 1.8 petrol which she likes to run as close as possible to the red line for as long as possible. While describing her drives to Shed she kept shouting a word which sounded like ‘forzer’. He can’t really remember much of what she said as his mind was elsewhere at the time, specifically about a foot below her face. If he’d been thinking straight he would have told her that the diesel 2.4 JTDM with manual gearbox would have been two seconds quicker through the 0-60 than her 1.8, with a much higher top end to boot of 142mph compared to the 1.8’s weedy 129mph.
Lusso means luxury, and not, as Shed stupidly stated in a previous Alfa story, light. The Italian for light, as in weight, is of course leggera. If you’re referring to the other sort of light, i.e. the one that’s supposed to brighten up the room when you switch it on, it’s luce, though that does tend to darken the room if it’s the Ferrari Luce you’re talking about. It looks better in the dark, you see. Anyway, a Lusso comes with climate control, auto wipers and a load of other gear. It’s a good spec to have and this looks like a more than decent example of the 159 Lusso genre.
Registered in February 2007, our shed was too early to benefit from the 2.4’s upgrade in the latter part of 2007 to 207hp at 4,000rpm and 295lb ft at 1,500rpm. Still, there’s not much wrong with what it has got, viz a meatylicious 200hp with the same 295lb ft of thrunge, albeit slightly higher in the rev range at 2,000rpm. A quick stage 1 remap will boost these figures to 240hp and 353lb ft.
Whatever the numbers, the 2.4’s 20-valve inline five engine design endows it with a mellifluous woofle. That’s assuming it starts. The glowplugs don’t last forever. They’ll be doing well if they’ve made it to 50,000 miles. Fortunately, unlike on some motors, they’re easy to change yourself, but you do need to be careful with the fragile connectors. Electronics generally can be dicky and the dual-mass flywheel shouldn’t be trusted beyond 75,000 miles.
This 159 has just been MOT’d at 142,000 miles so the prospective buyer will need to scrutinise the paperwork, if there is any, for evidence of works carried out. One of the two advisories from that test was for a slack handbrake. The other, more worryingly, was for some creeping (but so far not excessive) corrosion to the nearside front suspension mounting point and inner wheel arch. If that can be sorted and all else is well there shouldn’t be too many unpleasant noises coming from the owner’s wallet. Your average fuel consumption will be 40mpg and the VED is vaguely affordable at £360pa.
Altogether it seems like a stylish way to get around for a scant £1,989. Shed would like to talk a bit more about it but he’s just heard that Carlotta is making sausages this morning so he’s gone to watch that. Hopefully he won’t find out that meat tenderising is done with a spiky wooden mallet.
This looks a low spec model but Alfa got a tune out of the 2.4.
The person that I sold it to took the mileage to 180k. The overall quality of the car was superb, especially the leather interior that was vastly superior to that on the E60 525i it replaced. The E60, I had that 525i from new and at 40k miles the interior looked very second hand.
It’s an itch I’ll scratch later. They’re decently reliable, I could easily get parts from Italy (those fiat multijet engines were ubiquitous at the time) and it looks better than its successor, the Giulia.
That the Giulia is the better car, is another story…
Or actually its better - the engine and gearbox are actually very solid units!
Biggest letdown of these is they don't drive like an Alfa should and the 1.8, 2.2 and 3,2 GM petrol engines are absolute crap.
The old 156 with sorted suspension and good tyres is a lovely thing to drive, but these are so overweight they feel like a barge.
They were very reliable superbly engineered cars with great build quality. I sold mine at 4 years old with 110k miles and it looked and felt like a car that had done 30k.
However I bought it from a seller in Whitby and it confirmed what they say about buying seaside cars: rust. Sills rusting through on a garaged 11 plate car wasn’t acceptable.
Ferrari obviously used the dashboard as inspiration for the one in the Luce.
Good shed.
Remember when they came out, was walking back from the shops with my wife and spotted one for the first time parked up and was wittering on about what a stunning looking car it was, hadnt noticed the owner stood behind the fence and he heard me and said hello, looked absolutely thrilled that his purchase has been validated by some random bloke walking by, from then on we always let on to each other.
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