2003 Alfa Romeo 156 JTS Sportwagon review from UK and Ireland

Within a week or so of owning the car, the ABS warning light came on. This turned out to be a poor connection to the yaw sensor. Apparently, the offending connector is buried deep behind the dashboard and can be strained when you adjust the position of the steering wheel.

Ever since the above was fixed, the trip computer has only been able to work out one fuel consumption - that is 141.5mpg. Whilst that is very impressive, unfortunately it's nowhere near the truth. The dealer has tried quite a few times to fix this, but hasn't managed yet.

Radio reception was disappointingly rubbish - especially and specifically BBC R4 FM. This has been finally brought up to an OK standard by fitting an amplifier in the C pillar, but maybe they have different specifications of amplifiers because it took a couple of goes. During which, the dealer rather hamfistedly broke the tailgate trim panel, which took a couple of weeks to get replaced.

I bought this new, but pre-registered, at what still seems a brilliant bargain price. Having had 4 years of pleasurable, but slightly dull ownership of my Golf Mk4 GTi petrol turbo, I decided it was time to risk something Italian.

Basically, I'm delighted with it, and very much hope to be able to contribute to lifting it off the bottom of all the normal owner survey charts.

Every time, it's a pleasure to look at, to drive, to clean and to be seen in. It's just the right size for what I want, lovely natural leather interior and everybody perceives it as a far more upmarket vehicle than it actually is.

The ride quality, steering and handling are great, but you do need to proceed with a bit of caution on bumpy roads since it's all to easy to ground the engine under-tray.

The engine is gorgeous and enjoys revving. I can't make my mind up about performance - it often doesn't feel to be picking up speed as much as I'd like, but the end result in overtaking etc is pretty successful. Maybe it's a bit quiet and smooth to feel really fast.

Insurance seems to be a bit unfairly pricey, and all along I've thought that I perhaps ought to have a diesel since fuel consumption isn't as good as the Golf was. But, at the time, price, performance and availability of diesels wasn't so good. Maybe next time - but 'next time' will have to wait a bit since depreciation is a bit hard to stomach...