Alfa Romeo 156 1.9 JTD - Why wouldn't you?

[Mal]

Mal, is this rust limited to the pre-facelift models or does it affect all of them?

I've been told by the Alfa Owners club to basically consider any car regardless of interior because you can pick leathers up for £100-200 and it's a 2 hour job to swap them.

Brakes can't be any worse than my old Celica and I won't be giving it too much hassle anyway, traffic is always getting worse of a morning so it will spend more time going nowhere at all...

An old work colleague had a 147 and the suspension seemed to be made of cheese, constantly having to have bits changed - I'm hoping this isn't a similar problem on the bigger 156?!

How much is the tax on the 2.4 Swampy? I'm struggling to find out tax bands etc.

I've seen too many 156's end up in scrap yards with rotten floor pans. Most were the rear floorpans. If I'd seen this in time today I could have got a snap of a V6 I'm dismantling, the drivers side floor and bulkhead are completely rotten

Leathers are a nice place to be and are cheap (I sold a full blue set with 3rd headrest for €60 for example) but beware of wind up windows behind on some leather equipped cars. If converting to rear elec, cars from 1998 - late 2000 have different looms to cars from 2001 onwards so a door loom from a 2000 car won't fit a 2001 car and vice versa (as I found out one summer :p) switches are different too (coloured sockets vs all black)

Brakes aren't an issue on smaller engined cars such as the 1.6 or 1.8 however anything heavier or more powerful will fade the brakes at an alarming rate (whilst test driving a 2.5 I went to slow down and turn up my road however the brakes did absolutely nothing and I just had t coast along for another bit down the main road..... Admittedly spirited driving caused that )

The 156 has the same double wishbone setup as the 147. But polybushing will eliminate the need to be constantly changing upper wishbones

Here tax on a 2.4 is €1034 and a 1.9 is €710 (same as my 406) it can't be anything near that in the UK!