The Alfa Romeo 156 is an Exquisite Saloon Car With a Glorious V6 Soundtrack

Before you read this article, please do check out my YouTube channel, Twin-Cam, where I have a more in-depth video version of this article available. I have over 17,000 subscribers and 2.3 million views, so please do subscribe!

Today, we’re looking at one of the most understatedly pretty saloon cars of all time, and a car that is definitely on my bucket list to one day own. This is the Alfa Romeo 156. And it is gorgeous.

The 156 was Alfa Romeo’s mid-sized saloon car from the late 90s and early 2000s, replacing the boxy 155 and indicating the start of what became something of a styling revolution as the company moved towards the new Millennium. It's very easy for us to sit here in 2021 and ignore the ills and disappointments of Alfa Romeo in the late-1980s and early-1990s. Yes, they made some wonderful cars, but by this era, their products were less competitive and they had to be saved by FIAT, leading to accusations that they were losing their identity. So through the 1990s it was imperative within both Alfa Romeo and FIAT that any new models really knocked the ball out of the park and made the automotive press, and even more importantly potential customers, stand up and take notice. The first of these models was the 916 GTV and Spider, but the one that really mattered was the replacement for the 155, the 156 that we have here. This car ripped up the last 20 years of Alfa Romeo styling, employing the retro design trend of the 90s, and looked to the glory years of Alfa Romeo road cars in designing a shape that while so recognisably Alfa Romeo, was so fresh and sharp that nobody could ignore it.

Alfa's boxy and edgy 155.

Alfa's boxy and edgy 155.

Styled by Walter de Silva and so very clearly in that vein of retro style, the 156 takes its inspiration from the 1950s and 60s but without any constraints, allowing it to be completely fresh rather than any kind of retro facsimile. And that is the reason why this car has aged so gracefully. At nearly 25 years of age it is still strikingly beautiful, and thanks to the lack of constraints, lacks the awkwardness of other retro-styled saloon cars such as the Jaguar S-Type.

But the 156 throws off all the traditional saloon car styling cues and clearly guns for a coupe-style appearance. The curvaceousness of the silhouette and shallow boot are the first step, but it’s through the doors that the 156 completes this style. The front door handles are a design feature in themselves. They’re prominent in the design and are artwork on their lonesome, but the rear handles are hidden up in the pillars. Many cars since have repeated this feature, but none have made it work like the 156. The difference in treatment between front and rear door handles is what makes that styling feature work so well here, and why it has failed on many other cars. The chroming of the front handles and their accentuation in the design draws the eye to them and away from the lack of rear handles. The length of the doors is also perfect, stopping the front handle from appearing so far forwards that you end up looking for its rear counterpart. This very careful design work is more responsible than the angle of the rear screen and boot lid in making the 156 appear as sleek as a large Coupe rather than a family saloon.

The curvy 156 wasn't just a departure from the 155, but a complete redrawing of Alfa's design language. From our eyes, it appears stylish but not exceptional, but in 1997 this was astonishing.

The curvy 156 wasn't just a departure from the 155, but a complete redrawing of Alfa's design language. From our eyes, it appears stylish but not exceptional, but in 1997 this was astonishing.

But alongside the silhouette are the pin-sharp features of the 156’s styling personality. At the back the pointed taillamps that curve into the swage line that’s so high at the back but curves down into the squinting headlamps that work their way into the very deeply set grille. Even this was something of a departure for Alfa. Over the previous decades, they’d shied away from using their signature triangular grille as a styling feature. It had always been small and placed within a traditional horizontal grille, but the 156 changed all that. The grille defines the front end styling, making the 156 even more identifiable as an Alfa Romeo, several times more than the 155 that preceded it.

That grille screams Alfa Romeo - but had not been the feature it is on the 156 for decades.

That grille screams Alfa Romeo - but had not been the feature it is on the 156 for decades.

Simple but beautiful. The 156 doesn't overdo its style, helping it remain elegant.

Simple but beautiful. The 156 doesn't overdo its style, helping it remain elegant.

With the exception of that big wing on this Sport model that breaks the sense of elegance, I think the 156 is among the best looking saloon cars of all time, and one of the most recognisable, but it also seems to be one of the most overlooked, even as these start to become proper classics the spotlight of revisionism doesn’t really seem to have touched the 156, and this is happening in a world where people have already started raving about how good looking cars like the Rover 75 really are. Why this car isn’t getting the attention I do not know, but I think it’s something to do with how comfortable everybody is with it. Alfa 156? Yeah, everyone just agrees how beautiful this shape is.

The scalloping within the 156's cabin is a sight to behold, and with the twin instrument pods, bring that retro feeling to the forefront of the driver's attention.

The scalloping within the 156's cabin is a sight to behold, and with the twin instrument pods, bring that retro feeling to the forefront of the driver's attention.

The interior’s styling is even sharper and more sculpted than the exterior. In fact, the dashboard is so scalloped on either side that 2D photography doesn’t do it justice. You have to be here to really experience the depth of the design. Unfortunately, at least in my opinion, this particular 156 has a rather boring colour specification. In fact, the whole car is monochrome, which does take away part of the Alfa Romeo magic, but we can imagine the effect that the silver centre stack and some lovely tan seats would have in here.

Alfa Romeo, Milano.

Alfa Romeo, Milano.

But the 156 is so much more than its exceptional styling, as on paper the suspension setup still reads very nicely in 2021. At the back, we have MacPherson struts, which is rather normal, but they’re very well located with two transverse links that allow just a touch of passive rear-wheel steering, which was very much in vogue in the 90s. At the front though, straight in with the double wishbones and very specific geometry. I’m led to believe that this era of Alfa Romeos are very sensitive to their suspension being in fine fettle, but when it all works, it produces a front-drive car that handles incredibly well, virtually eliminating torque steer. As you would expect, there are disc brakes all-round with ABS on all models. This platform is carried over and modified from the old 155, because it was good to start with, and Alfa added a shot of lightness by using quite a lot of aluminium throughout the suspension. The result is a kerb weight of 1320 kg for this V6 engined car.

Speaking of V6s. Oh. My. Word. The modern world has virtually done away with engine bay styling. Manufacturers just cover up their mess with a bit of Tupperware, but even at the beginning of that era, Alfa Romeo was polishing their inlet pipes. I don’t believe there has ever been a better-looking engine outside of something genuinely exotic. This beauty is the Busso V6, named after its designer, Giuseppe Busso. And here in the 156, it is in its ultimate form with four overhead camshafts and 24 sodium-filled valves servicing the six cylinders.

The 156 range was available with two six-cylinder petrols, starting with the 2.5-litre we have here, producing a rather modest 192 hp @ 6300 rpm and 164 lb-ft torque all the way up at 5000 rpm. Not that it’s such a bad thing though, because this V6 is regarded among the best sounding engines of all time. The larger V6 was available in the snorting GTA, at 3.2-litres and 250 bhp.

Source: Tech Beezer.

Source: Tech Beezer.

The gearbox in this car is a six-speed manual, the same as you’d get in any V6 156, but the interesting gearboxes in the 156 are actually the automatics. The 2.0 Twin Spark was available with what Alfa Romeo named ‘Selespeed’. The Selespeed gearbox is a five-speed automated manual that, while you are able to use it as a traditional automatic, it seems to have been designed with manual shifting in mind. There were originally two buttons on either side of the steering wheel to change gear, later changed for proper paddles. When this was introduced in 1999, I believe it was the only car of this size and at this price point available with such a system, as opposed to a traditional torque converter automatic. In fact, the only systems I can think of off the top of my head are BMW’s SMG, only available on the M3, and Ferrari’s F1 gearbox.

However, if four-cylinder engines aren’t good enough for you, and I’ll be honest, when a Busso V6 is on offer I should hope that’s all of you, Alfa had another strange automatic available on a 2.5-litre car like this one. This was known as the Q-System, and this time it was a torque converter automatic, but Alfa Romeo just had to introduce some kind of cleverness to it, and so they gave it an H-pattern. No, seriously. You had the standard PRND, but when you move across into where most gearboxes would give you a manual mode, is a proper H-pattern. However, there are two things wrong with this. First of all, if you want to change gears, get a manual. It’s still a slush-box underneath. Second is the worst problem. It is a four-speed automatic. Now. This is a car produced by Alfa Romeo, a company that trades on engineering excellence and developing features that are a decade ahead of the mainstream, and that’s when they’re not just making a car that’s desirable for its styling. For them, in the late 1990s, to unironically produce a four-speed automatic with a gimmick is ridiculous. Keep your Sillyspeeds. I’ll have a manual, please and thank you.

I'm not a fan of the wing. I believe it breaks the sense of elegance I love so much, but this specification of 156 is amazingly rare.

I'm not a fan of the wing. I believe it breaks the sense of elegance I love so much, but this specification of 156 is amazingly rare.

Now, Alfa Romeo, as a manufacturer, is one in perpetual trouble, and I feel it just always will be, so in judging how well the 156 performed we need to take that point into consideration. By the time mainstream production ended in 2005, the 156 was the most successful Alfa Romeo of all time. They sold over 680,000 156s, which goes to prove that it really did alter people’s perceptions of the brand and take something of a fight to the likes of BMW with a car that just remains one of the best-looking saloon cars of all time. I say that yet again because it is so fundamental to its success. In combination with that superbly sonorous V6 and its driving dynamics, as a near-25-year-old design, I would very much like to buy one of these before values really start climbing. And that is as big of an endorsement I could ever give a car.

If you enjoyed this article, then please do consider checking out my YouTube channel, Twin-Cam where I have a more in-depth video version.