An Alfa Romeo is normally a choice made with the heart, not with reason. This theme was also used in an old Alfa Romeo advert. In fact even my choice was purely of the heart, if not for a few hints of rationality. Basically the question is: why buy such an old and in some ways polluting car? My first personal answer might be: because I was looking for an Alfa Romeo, not a car in general. There are also newer models like the Giulietta, but they were at least twice the price. So the obvious choice was an Alfa 159.

The problem is that the Alfa 159 is a model that went out of production in 2011 and was only replaced by the Giulia in 2016, so Alfa 159s in the second-hand market will certainly have a lot of miles on the clock. Also for economic reasons I would have chosen a diesel engine, because of the low fuel cost. It is true that the multijet engines fitted to Fiat group cars are practically eternal and I had already experienced this with the Alfa 156 and the Fiat bravo. But buying a used 159 that would be at least 13 years old was still quite a risk. I made up my mind only because I found an ad for an Alfa 159 in good condition owned by a mechanic, a garage owner, who was clearly passionate about the car and who, according to his statement, had maintained it maniacally, having done a series of jobs (unfortunately excluding the clutch) that have to be done on multijet engines of this type and age. It seemed to me the only opportunity at hand to lower the risk as much as possible of buying a car with so many years on its back.
And that is the only reason why there is any rationality in buying my current alfa 159.

For the rest, the main reason is simply because I like it so much! I like and I have always liked the exterior lines of this model, designed entirely by Giorgetto Giugiaro, who had also redesigned the front of the second series of the Alfa 156 I had before. Granted that even today when I see an Alfa 156 sport wagon similar to the one I had, I somewhat regret having given it away, the Alfa 159 has always been a car that has caught my eye at every glimpse. In particular, the front end has an eye-catching design that is still state-of-the-art today, such that it doesn’t disfigure at all even when compared to the current Alfa Romeo Giulia! The car’s ride is also impeccable, the performance is extremely satisfying. Safety is top notwithstanding its age. Knowing that the car can negotiate any kind of curve at high speeds without breaking down in the slightest doesn’t mean that I enjoy doing crazy things on the road, but it simply makes me feel very, very safe when I’m on the road with this car.

In other ways, this was a car that did not convince even me at the beginning: it seemed a little too big and heavy to be the replacement for the Alfa 156, it seemed more like the replacement for the 166. In fact, that had been the Fiat group’s first idea when it had put this project on the drawing board. The abandonment of the General Motors group and Saab, who had conceived the project together with Fiat, meant that the Italian group had to reduce the project to a replacement for the smaller model, the 156. Unfortunately, the petrol engines produced by the General Motors group remained part of the project. And this was already enough to decree a failure among Alfisti. In my particular case, the engine is of course a very Italian multijet, which was also programmed to gain more sprint on all gears while also decreasing consumption and fatigue. If one can complain about the condition and weight of this car, there is always the fact that, even without the modifications to the ECU, the power-to-weight ratio compared to that of my previous Alfa 156, which is considered more streamlined and snappy because it is smaller and lighter, is still favourable to the Alfa 159, whose performance is superior.

While for many the Alfa 159 was not a real Alfa, in reality its exterior and interior are reminiscent of Alfa Romeo in every detail. I should say they scream Alfa Romeo from every angle! The line is taken from a special model that was created by Zagato, called the SZ. The car is very aggressive, with a low and wide front end with three headlights on each side next to the classic Alfa Romeo shield. It has a very naughty attitude, in the sporty sense of the word, reminiscent of a feline on the attack. The interior, which in my personal case really makes me feel at home, echoes the classic Alfa Romeo lines: three-spoke sports steering wheel, control panel with circular speedometer and rev counter with the classic ‘eyelids’ that were found in Alfa Romeos of the 1960s. Even the various portholes of the air vents and water temperature control instruments and the clock, located in the central dashboard, are angled towards the driver like those of yesteryear.

I was absolutely delighted with the Bravo that I bought immediately after giving away my beloved Alfa 156. I liked the Bravo for so many reasons, I’ve always liked its styling since it came out, I totally prefer it to a Volkswagen Golf of the same age (and even recent ones). It sounds crazy, but I really don’t see what it lacks compared to its German competitor. It has also been a very unsuccessful car, but I just can’t understand why.

Having said that, I just missed sitting behind the wheel of an Alfa Romeo. It sounds silly, but for some reason Alfa Romeos make me feel at home, they somehow remind me of the old days, times when the pace of life was completely different, there was no internet, no computers, no mobile phones. Although I am by no means the type to reject technology, I miss the slow pace of those days, of when I was a boy growing up with dreams of learning to drive a car. Back then, getting a driving licence and thus being more autonomous, meant growing up, coming of age Knowing how to drive well was something worthy of respect. Today’s young people, I see this with my own son, are not so interested in learning to drive, they are ready to be driven by self-driving cars while they can happily continue to consult the screen of their device. The screen has also become an integral part of the control panel in cars. Advertisements even recite the resolution and size of the screen and the Internet connection capabilities of cars. Stuff that would make anyone used to hearing about performance, road holding, top speed, the time it takes to go 100 m, to reach 100 km/h, etc. laugh.

Instead, today it is the connectivity of the car and the resolution of its screens that is important! I want to drive instead, I want it to be a pleasure, I don’t care about connecting to the Internet with the instrument panel of my car; obviously I’m from a different generation, I turned sixty this year and I’ve been driving an Alfa Romeo again for a year. An Alfa Romeo has always been a pleasure to drive: high performance, road-holding and, for some reason, its appearance, both inside and out, is reminiscent of cars, or rather of the Alfa Romeos that were built in a time when Internet connectivity in a car meant absolutely nothing, it didn’t really exist. The Alfa 159 is not connected at all. The electronics play their part, but simply in the computerised control unit that regulates the engine’s performance; for the rest, the previous owner had added the Bluetooth connector to the old standard CD player, so I can connect my mobile phone and listen to streaming music, yes, from the Internet, while travelling – even though the car is almost twenty years old…… And I don’t need anything else from an IT point of view, even though IT is my job (I’m certainly not a 60-year-old klutz, quite the contrary!).

When I am at the wheel of an Alfa Romeo, starting with my own, I feel completely different sensations than in another car; even if it is much newer, there is really no comparison, if only to think of the design of the interior, as well as the absolutely avant-garde aesthetics compared to other car manufacturers. The exterior lines are reminiscent of the Alfa Romeos that made this brand famous, that made motoring history. Having the dashboard of an Alfa Romeo in front of me, even one that is twenty years old, makes me feel these sensations, I feel at home, in touch with the past, perhaps because I don’t like the future of motoring. By bending to the market Alfa Romeo is producing mini SUVs – OK the Stelvio, however they say it has such a sporty set-up that it is as drivable as a saloon. But the Tonale and even worse the Junior don’t look like Alfa Romeos at all. They don’t give those sensations that I feel when I sit behind the wheel of my old Alfa 159. I would probably even try them in the Giulia, but you don’t have to go that far and spend that kind of money.

“Orologio,” “Acqua,” are the Italian labels on the on-board instruments that refer back to the days when things were done differently. The instruments are analogue there are actually needle pointers that move and indicate speeds and revolutions per minute. Today’s modern Alfas have monitors that draw the circular aspect of the car controls giving them the look of those of yesteryear, but they are digital reproductions. It seems that this is inevitable, who would build analogue instruments with dials any more! They probably don’t even exist these days. I don’t think there are any vintage set-ups with analogue pointer instruments on modern cars. Even Ferrari has a digital instrument panel. Could it be nostalgia for someone who is starting to get old? Am I 60 years old and like the idea of driving cars from when I was 40? It may well be. And that’s fine with me as I am perfectly at ease in front of this wonderful dashboard. I even stop and look at my own car after I park it, simply because of how beautiful it is, like a work of art. Modern cars, all in the shape of larger or smaller SUVs, do not give me the impression of safety that mine does, low-riding and sticking to the ground.

I wouldn’t feel as safe driving a brand new car, but built the way most people like it today, in the shape of what to me is a van, so easily destabilised, it only takes a little to overturn or go wheels-up. Even by disabling the electronic safety controls already available at the time of my Alfa 159, I feel safer than in modern SUVs. In theory they should prevent the driver from losing control and skidding. I don’t even believe it when I see it in cars built that way. They can’t surpass the safety of a sports-type sedan setup.
On the 2006 159, in addition to the obvious ABS, skid control and vehicle stability cornering were already available as standard. These are accessories that have been in cars since those years and have since become mandatory for safety reasons. On the Alfa 159 they can be disabled, but the car continues to have absolutely superior standards of drivability and road holding, thanks to a very rigid chassis and suspension of impeccable quality. In short, I don’t feel any less safe because I’m driving an older car, quite the contrary….