Long-term update: We fix up our Alfa Romeo 156…for free!

Everyone in the DriveArabia family likes Alfa Romeos until sarcasm kicks in. So, when our buddy was planning to leave the country for good, all we cared about was his car — a 2003 Alfa Romeo 156 V6 with 250,000 km on the clock. As mentioned by him, we knew the car had some “minor” ongoing issues and our plan was to keep the car for a while before we sell it off. It was registered under the Editor-in-Chief’s name, as he wanted a taste of Alfa ownership as well. On the day he was leaving, I dropped him off at the airport and took over this car.

On my first drive, I found the reverse lock on the manual gearbox wasn’t functional, which led to the risk of engaging reverse gear while driving forward. After an hour or two, I got used to it but as darkness fell, there were more faults, such as numerous blown bulbs. Oh, the Alfa’s ex did mention that the bulbs kept blowing due to a possible electrical issue, but I blamed the mechanics here using greasy hands to replace a bulb. On the same night, I ended up driving in what felt like the darkest road in Dubai with one headlight.

We fixed the lights first as this was a safety-related issue. There was a spare headlight assembly in the boot (nice surprise) where we got a headlight bulb and we bought a pair of parking-light bulbs. Oddly enough, the high beams started working the very next day we got the car. After replacing the rest of the bulbs, we never had any further issues till date.

Then we thought of getting the reverse lock fixed and as I stripped the centre console, something didn’t look right. Once we removed the mechanism, we realised it was installed backwards by the ghetto mechanic who fiddled with it before.

We got lucky with a few other repairs, including the windshield washer reservoir which had a leak, and it was fixed just by pushing the motor back into the tank, making it to seal properly. Also, we took it to our usual garage to fix the misaligned side skirt for free, using lots of glue.

Later, one of the power window was lazy to roll up. One day, the window is completely jammed, and an evening was spent removing the door panel and getting the jammed window rolled up. So far, every little effort we put into the car had been successful, except for the interior cleaning which we tried over the weekend and couldn’t get the ingrained dust out, so we called in a mobile steam-cleaning place which we also reviewed earlier.

Except for these minor niggles, this car is in half-decent shape. After taking all this effort, and with a driving character that’s rather entertaining, it is hard to let go of the car at the moment.

Original Mileage When Bought: 250,010 km
Latest Mileage To Date: 260,500 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