Well, these are two pretty similar cars we have here! It's only details that could potentially make the difference. Considering they both belong to the large family car segment and utilize the same 4-door sedan body style and the front wheel drive system, it all comes up to the specific petrol engine choice they offer. The first one has a Alfa Romeo-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 120hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 103hp engine designed by FIAT.

Unfortunatelly, neither of the two vehicles was submitted to the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) testing. This makes it virtually impossible for me to pick one over the other and I'm generally against buying such cars as the safety should really always come first. That aside, let's consider some other aspects which affect safety. Both vehicles belong to the large family car segment, which is generally a good thing safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it? Furthermore, taking kerb weight as an important factor into account, Lybra offers a marginal difference of 1% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Lancia as a brand displays somewhat better results, at least on all of the models level. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Alfa Romeo with an average rating of 4.2, and models under the Lancia badge with 4.1 out of 5. The same official information place 156 as average reliability-wise, and Lybra is more or less at the same level.Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as 156 rank it on average as 4.6, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.2 out of 5.

Alfa Romeo is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.8 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 200 kilometers per hour, 15km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy things look pretty much the same for both cars, averaging around 8.2 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (34 mpg), in combined cycle.

Lancia appears just a bit more reliable, although the difference is truly marginal. The most important thing when deciding between any two vehicles should always be safety, both passive and active. In my opinion, everything taken into account, Lybra offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. From there things take a different direction, with Alfa Romeo offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. Fuel consumption is more or less the same. At the end, as much as I'd like to give you a winner here, it's simply a pure tie if you ask me. In any case that's my personal view, built upon all the data available to me. What should decide here though is the way you feel about the two vehicles, and I hope you'll find my guidelines useful in the process. I suggest you spend two more minutes in order to find out which car, based on your needs and budget, would be picked by the virtual adviser™, out of 12.000+ vehicles we currently have in our database.