Here’s our buyer’s guide on what to worry about with a Alfa Romeo 156 (97 - 06). Let’s work through the car, as if inspecting it before buying.

Starting with the ‘running gear,’ such as shock absorbers, suspension bushes, springs and coils. On the Alfa Romeo 156 from (97 - 06) these components have a failure rate of 31.91%.

You can visually inspect brake discs for lips and scoring, and the car’s mileage should tell you if the tyres and brake pads are going to need a change. But there is a 4.26% chance that the braking system itself will fail. That’s potentially a big bill.

Lift the bonnet next, and check for signs of oil leaks. Also look for damaged hoses, worn drive belts, broken clips or rusting pipes. All these can be signs of future problems with the engine, cooling or heating systems which have warranty claim rates of 14.89% and 9.22% respectively.

Moving into the car, turn the ignition on and look for warning lights. Warranty claims for electrical problems occur on 20.92% of cars.

Take the car on a test drive and during this time you can assess the steering for accuracy, stability at speed, and heaviness. If the wheel shakes at speed or is very heavy at slow speeds then there may be a problem with the steering system, something that leads to warranty claims on 1.42% of cars.

At this point you should be able to make a reasonable decision about whether to buy the car or not, but you can find further advice and Alfa Romeo 156 for sale at Used Car Expert.

If you are looking to buy a 4 year old Alfa Romeo GT then you will find these Alfa Romeo warranty claim statistics very useful.

If your a car has an average repair time of over 2.14 hours then it is above market average and the car can be expected to be costly to run. The average repair time for an Alfa Romeo GT (04 - ) is 2.5 hours.

That labour time, combined with parts costs, gives the Alfa Romeo an average cost of repair of £329.81, which compares to the market average of £327.93.

Market-wide, air conditioning fails on an average of 4% of cars, where as the air conditioning failure rate on an GT is .

Brakes and suspensions systems can be deemed to be strong and reliable if they fail less often than 9 times in a hundred, the Alfa Romeo GT from (04 - ) fails on around of cars.

Cooling systems are prone to failure on most cars and so the industry average warranty claim rate is not surprisingly about 12.5%, and that puts the Alfa Romeo GT’s rate of 7.14% in context.

Not until a car requires its owner to claim on a warranty for electrical systems more than 28% of the time should it be considered unreliable or problematic – the GT’s claim rate is 10.71%.

Engine re-build and re-conditioned replacements, let alone new engines, are a massive cost to owners and warranty companies, even though the failure rate is around 12% (which compares favourably to the electrical system above). So bear that in mind when considering that the Alfa Romeo GT (04 - ) aged over 3 years claim on their warranties for engine issues 7.14% of the time.

Fuel systems claims tend not to be too expensive when compared to the engine, or as difficult to diagnose as electrical issues, but should not be overlooked when considering the Alfa Romeo GT reliability as the average failure and claim rate is 11.3% on all cars (industry wide) and on the Alfa Romeo GT specifically it is 21.43%.

Steering issues are relatively uncommon, but they can be expensive to repair, so don’t overlook the GT’s 7.14% steering system warranty claim rate. Anything over 7% is considered above average or high.

The final really big bill can come from transmission failure or problems and any car with an above average failure rate of more than 8% should be treated with caution – the Alfa Romeo GT comes in at 17.86%.

You can protect yourself against all these problems with an aftermarket Alfa Romeo warranty.

Cars of around 5 years old should have mileage of about 50,019.66.

Assuming that you are looking at cars of similar age, then you will find the following are a reasonable indication of the reliability. The statistics are based on Alfa Romeo 147 warranty claims in England, Scotland and Wales.

The major bills come from engines, suspension, electrical and transmission.

The transmission alone fails 16.67% of the time in cars over 3 years old that has a private car warranty. The largest bill on the Alfa Romeo 147 – if we look just at the (01 - 09) year range – is £3,155.76.

Things like the electrical systems and air conditioning can also lead to big bills but tend to be smaller, albeit often needing minor repairs more often. Interestingly, in the case of air conditioning, because the repairs are often very cheap, the warranty claim rate is low at 1.28% whereas general electrical faults tends to be much higher – in the case of warranty claims on the Alfa Romeo 147 from (01 - 09) it is 14.10%.

The average cost of repair on the Alfa Romeo 147 from (01 - 09) is £457.43 and takes around 3.69 hours in the garage to have those repairs completed.

Overall, the Alfa Romeo 147 (01 - 09) incident rate is 34 and so the Reliability Index gives it a score of 157.