Alfa Romeo
The Alfa Romeo 156 (Type 932) is a compact executive car produced by the Italian automobile manufacturer Alfa Romeo. It was introduced at the 1997 Frankfurt Motor Show as the replacement for the Alfa Romeo 155. The 156 received a positive reception and in the following year went on to win the 1998 European Car of the Year award. The 156 saloon was discontinued in Europe late in 2005, while the Q4 Crosswagon continued in production until the end of 2007. Cars were assembled at the Fiat Group factory in Pomigliano d'Arco, Italy and at a General Motors facility in Rayong, Thailand.
Production in Thailand began in March 2002 and ran for only a couple of years. The cars produced there were targeted for the Asia-Pacific markets. Between 1996 and 2007, 673,435 units of the 156 were produced. The 156 was available in saloon, Sportwagon (estate) and Crosswagon (crossover) bodystyles with seven engine configurations; it went through two facelifts, first in 2002 and then in 2003. The Sportwagon advertising campaign was made featuring actress Catherine Zeta-Jones. In 2005, the 159 became the replacement for the 156.
From the Wikipedia article Alfa Romeo 156, CC BY-SA.
The Alfa Romeo 156 is one of 194 Alfa Romeo models in the MotorJury library, the catalogue that sets out to hold every car ever made — production, prototype and concept alike. The record places its introduction in 1996. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.
To read the Alfa Romeo 156 properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1990s were the decade of refinement — airbags and ABS became universal, Japanese build quality set the world standard, and the modern SUV segment was effectively invented. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the Lotus Cars Lotus Elise, the Porsche Porsche Boxster, the Škoda Auto Škoda Octavia — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.
On paper, the Alfa Romeo 156 reads like this: the record lists its engine as Petrol: / 1.6 L Alfa Romeo Twin Spark engine#16-valve Twin Spark engines / Twin Spark Multi-valve / 16V Straight-four engine / I4 / 1.8 L Alfa Romeo Twin Spark engine#16-; kerb weight is recorded at 1230 –; drive goes through 5-speed Manual transmission / manual / 6-speed manual / 5-speed Selespeed Electrohydraulic manual transmission / automated manual / 6-speed Selespeed automated manual (GTA) / 4-spe; the layout is Front-engine, front-wheel-drive layout / Front-engine, front-wheel-drive / Front-engine, four-wheel-drive layout / Front-engine, four-wheel-drive. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear. Production is recorded at 680,000 units, which makes it a solid production run.
Within Alfa Romeo's own catalogue the Alfa Romeo 156 sits alongside the A.L.F.A 12 HP, the A.L.F.A 15 HP, the A.L.F.A 15-20 HP, the A.L.F.A 24 HP. The record names the Alfa Romeo 155 as its predecessor and the Alfa Romeo 159 as its successor, fixing its place in the model line's chronology. Design is credited to Walter de Silva at Centro Stile Alfa Romeo / Giorgetto Giugiaro at Italdesign (2003 facelift). Assembly is recorded at Italy: Pomigliano d'Arco (Alfa Romeo Pomigliano d'Arco plant / Pomigliano d'Arco plant) / Thailand: Rayong (GM Thailand).
This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.
What this page cannot yet tell you is what the Alfa Romeo 156 costs to live with — that is a different dataset. MotorJury's ownership verdicts are computed from federal complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, published per model year as the nightly ingest reaches each car. If this model was sold in the United States, its years will surface in the ownership database; browse it live or price any car yourself with the true-cost calculator.
Specifications come from the Wikipedia infobox for this model (CC BY-SA) and the open Wikidata record, and are shown only where a source actually carries them — nothing here is estimated. Figures are manufacturer specifications, not measured results.
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Ownership verdicts are computed from NHTSA complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, re-priced for your country. Verdicts are published per model year as the data is ingested — browse them live, or open the true-cost calculator to price any year yourself.
Contemporaries from other marques, introduced within three years of this car.