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 5-door wagon 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 144hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 113hp 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. Still, apart from the official crash test results there are other things we need to be aware of. Both vehicles belong to the large family car segment, which is generally a good thing safety-wise, but it doesn't do much to help us decide between the two. Furthermore, when it comes to weight, a factor that most people underestimate, 156 offers a marginal difference of 4% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that FIAT is significantly less fault-prone, when all the models are taken into account. These are the results of an independent reasearch, while our visitors describe reliability of Alfa Romeo with an average rating of 4.2, and models under the FIAT badge with 4.3 out of 5. The same official information place 156 as average reliability-wise, and Marea 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 4.8, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 3.0 out of 5.

Alfa Romeo is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.1 seconds less than its competitor. In addition to that it accelerates all the way to 210 kilometers per hour, 17km/h more than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy things look pretty much the same for both cars, averaging around 8.5 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (33 mpg), in combined cycle.

Alfa Romeo 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, 156 offers slightly better overall protection and takes the lead. It all continues in the same direction, with Alfa Romeo being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. To make things even better, it consumps less fuel! All together, there's not much more to say, in this case I wouldn't even consider anything but Alfa Romeo. 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™, among more than 12.000 different ones in our database.