Alfa Romeo 166 Road Test Reports and Car Reviews

Alfa Romeo 166 1.9 MJet Veloce 2004

Following 18 months and 50,000 (yes fifty thousand) miles in a 2000 2.0 TS I was persuaded by my local Alfa independent dealer, Monza Sport, to try a 1.9 MJet . Well, to say the least, I was impressed. Fast and bags of torque. They agreed to a remap as part of the purchase price and I became the happy and well entertained owner of a 185bhp 156 with huge amounts of torque. On their advice I chose a 1.9 rather than the larger diesel as I was told that the extra weight of the 5 cylinder engine created a less well balanced car due to understeer. I had been happy with the TS. The MJet is even better. It requires a completely different driving technique; plenty of power from 2000 to 4000 revs compared with the need to revel in the revs of the TS to get the performance and less need to stir the 6 speed box of the diesel. So what stands out? Well it gets driven as hard if not harder than the TS and is returning an average of 43 mpg on BP ultimate; that’s about 10 mpg better than the TS. The updates to trim and air con are good. Handling on the optional 17 inch wheels is slightly improved over the previous car and the car remains an entertaining drive. The downside? Well if you bought one new, then early levels of depreciation will not have amused you but by buying a fully serviced, low mileage second hand car, someone else has taken that hit. I have done 69,000 miles in Alfa 156’s now and despite dire warnings in the press, the cars have proved reliable in general. They do wear out front wishbone bushes and drop links on the front anti-roll bar and bushes in the rear torsion bars but all are quite cheap to get repaired by a garage or easy to do yourself with a fairly basic level of mechanical skill. What improvement/change would I make. Well I’m considering fitting a Q diff. (can be fitted to all six speed boxes) to try to put a little more of the torque and power onto the road, particularly when its wet. Oh, and despite the air con. I wish my car had the sunshine roof. To sum up, fun to drive, a little bit different and not German. Make sure its serviced and find yourself a good specialist garage like I did.