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n Jim Jarmusch’s recent film, Broken Flowers, the protagonist Don Johnston, played by actor Bill Murray, complains about his run-of-the-mill rental car: "Couldn’t you have rented me a Porsche, or something I could really drive? I’m a stalker in a Taurus!" If only Don had done his stalking in Italy, he might have been able to get part of his wish. He might not have been able to do his stalking in a Porsche, but he could have been rented an Alfa Romeo.

That’s what my wife and I did last summer when, with my cousin and his wife, we spent a week in Umbria. Together, we rented from Avis a 2005 Alfa 156 1.9 JTD, and during that week we drove the car from Rome to Perugia and back and on countless local excursions throughout Umbria and southern Tuscany.

For those who aren’t familiar with its products since Alfa left the American market a decade ago, the 156 has been, since its introduction in 1998, its most important model range. It has been a very successful car commercially in European markets, and the European automobile press has generally praised it. It is the one car most responsible for Alfa’s rejuvenation as a manufacturer since Fiat took the company over.

Today Alfa offers three sedan lines: the 166 is their largest four-door car, a big sedan by European standards. It replaced the 164, the last sedan Alfa offered in the U. S. (one appeared at the 2004 AROC National Convention). The very successful 147 line is Alfa’s small two-door and four-door hatchback; it competes with cars like the VW Golf. It recently replaced the 145/146 series, which was the replacement for the 33 (which itself replaced the Alfasud line). Like a Golf to a Jetta or an Audi A3 to an A4, the 147 looks like a 156 with its trunk lopped off.

The 156 is Alfa’s midrange sport sedan. It provides seating for four adults of average size, front-wheel drive, and adequate performance in a lovely Giugiaro-designed body. It may not handle like Alfa’s legendary Milano Verde or Giulia Super sport sedans, but it is agile and corners well for a front-wheel-drive car. Alfa offers an extensive range of drivetrain packages in the 156, from a 115-horsepower turbodiesel to a 165-hp twin spark gasoline two-liter; there is also the rare and expensive 250-hp V-6 GTA version. Bill Murray’s Don Johnston might still prefer a Porsche to a 156 (at least to the four cylinder models), but even the turbodiesels should make him forget his Taurus.

The 156 replaced the forgettable 155 model, which in spite of its poor looks was very successful in European touring sedan racing. And the 155 was the front-wheel drive replacement for Alfa’s 75 series, the V-6 version of which came to the U. S. in the mid-1980s as the Milano.

Alfas have always been noted for their engines, their handling, and—at least in the sporting models—their looks, in that order. Until the 164, though, Alfa sedans were odd or quirky looking but never pretty. The 156, however, stood things on end: it is first and foremost remarkable for its beauty. Four features stand out in the 156’s carrozeria: its distinctive 1950s-style Alfa grille, the taillight treatment, its door handles, and its trompe-l’oeil, race-car-like narrowed waist.

Whereas Alfa gradually shrunk the size and prominence of its trademark shield-shaped grille during the years that it imported cars to the U. S., for the 156 it made the Alfa shield a prominent feature of the body’s front-end treatment. This grille gives this Alfa immediate product recognition, just like the grille of a Mercedes does. The prominent grille of the original 156 carried over as a distinctive feature of the 147 series when it was introduced, and in a minor 2003 re-design, Alfa made the front grille of the 156 even more prominent.

In addition to the grille treatment, Alfa designed the door latches to remind people of its 1950s cars. The latches for the front doors are large, chrome-colored handles of the type you find on a Duetto, where you push a button with your thumb while pulling the handle with your other fingers. But the latches for the rear doors are of black plastic integrated and hidden into the trim where the rear corner of the door meets its window frame. The result is that at first glance the 156 looks like a two-door car, in fact like a one-off 1900 or 2600 series GT. The first time I saw a 156 on the road (rather than in a photo) was on a street in Rome, in the spring of 1998, and I remember wondering, as it went by: what kind of old Alfa GT is that? The 156 is not, however, a retro car, like the new Bug or Mini. It is a thoroughly modern looking car that distinctly recalls some of Alfa’s glorious past, much as the latest Mercedes SLK recalls the 300 SLR.

The rear of the 156 also harkens back to Alfa’s past, with a straight vertical rear valance, just like on the 1960s Giulia and 1970s Berlina sedans. And the thin, horizontal taillight assemblies help to distinguish the car from anything else built today.

The profile of the 156 is typical of sedans today: a low, downward-slanting front end, a gradually rising beltline, a tall raked windshield, an equally raked but far shorter rear window, and a high trunk. But Alfa arched the rocker panels slightly upward, and the sides of the front and rear fenders have character lines near their tops that disappear into the doors. As a result, the car’s middle section looks like it curves inward at the bottom and on the sides, making the car look a little like a wasp-shaped formula racing car of the 1980s. This effect gives the 156 the most sensuous looking body of any four-door mass-produced sedan since the original Jaguar XJ-6.

Inside, the owner of a 1970s Alfa Spider will in some ways feel right at home. The dash board has a binnacle right behind the steering wheel that houses the speedometer and the rev counter in separate, deep-set round pods. Three small, round binnacles at the top of the center console contain the auxiliary gauges (though in a nod to supposedly better reliability, not an oil pressure gauge). The front seats have large side bolsters to hold you in place during spirited cornering. The five speed’s gear shift is a long, straight lever, although it rises vertically from the floor and not at a sharp angle from the console, like in my Spider. There is even an optional trim package with a wooden steering wheel and gearshift knob to make you feel right at home in a 20-years-newer Alfa.

On the other hand, the 156 has more side air bags than I could count, a relatively complex and effective climate control package, cruise control, and central locking. The steering wheel telescopes and adjusts for rake, so you don’t have to be built like a chimpanzee to find a comfortable driving position. Its pedals are better placed for heel-and-toe down shifting than on any other car I have ever driven (a weak point on two-liter Spica Spiders). For a front-wheel drive car, the gearshift linkage wasn’t bad, but it does not rival the direct feel of many rear-wheel drive cars or even of the best Japanese front-wheel drive offerings.

At the same time, though, a few ergonomic quirks help remind you that you couldn’t be driving anything other than an Alfa. One of the prices one pays for the 156’s beautiful Giugiaro body is the smallest trunk space in its class. The September 2005 issue of Automobilismo gives the trunk capacity at 378 liters; that’s eight liters (8,000 cc) less than a European model Ford Focus with the back seat up and a whopping 82 liters less than an A4 or a rear-wheel drive 3-series BMW. Alfa has designed more luggage capacity (405 liters) into its new replacement for the 156, the 159, but it still offers much less than the competition. Small wonder that the 156 Sportwagon is popular on the European market.

Far more annoying to the driver, though, is that if you don’t hold the gear shift just so when you shift into the odd-numbered gears (particularly third), it is difficult to avoid hitting the air-conditioner and two defroster buttons near the bottom of the center console (according to Automobilismo, this problem persists in the 159). And the cruise control stalk has to be the most hard to see and difficult to understand (without reading the owner’s manual) on the market.

Ergonomics and looks are all very fine, you ask, but how does the 156 drive? The 156 is a small four-door sedan, in the same category as the 3-series BMW, the Volvo S-40, the Jetta, the Acura Integra, and the Subaru Impreza. It has front-wheel drive, so you won’t be eating up M3s, or even 325is, at the track. But its firm though not jarring suspension makes the car nimble and allows it to corner aggressively; when we found unobstructed secondary roads we were able to enjoy ourselves in our 156. The brakes on the 156 are effective too; Automobilismo gives the stopping distance of a 1.9 JTD 16v from 130 kph (85 mph) as 65.1 meters (217 ft), and the higher performance gasoline 2.0 JTS makes that same stop in 61.4 meters (205 ft).

My cousin owns a 2004 325i, and primarily to tease me, he never stopped complaining about the 156 in comparison to his BMW. But he was at the wheel during the most exciting drive of our holiday: a back roads ride from Lake Trasimeno (on the border between Tuscany and Umbria) and the Tuscan hill town of Montalcino (famous for its red wine), and he clearly enjoyed himself.

It is in the engine compartment that our 156 most disappointed in comparison to my own Alfa. The "TD" in our 156 1.9 JTD stands for turbodiesel. Yes, our 156 was the base model, powered by the 115-hp 1.9 liter oil burner. While diesel cars have once again almost entirely disappeared from the U. S. market, during the last decade and thanks to turbocharging and various technological advances, they have flourished like never before in Europe. Except in the very rich Veneto region, during the four weeks we spent in Italy in July and August 2005, we almost never saw a gas-engined car larger than a Golf, and many smaller cars are diesel powered. Even at post-Katrina and Rita prices, fuel is still far more expensive in Europe than it is in the U. S., and diesel there often has a cost advantage over gasoline. As a result, something like 40% of all cars in Western Europe are diesels. And because of the new technology, diesel owners are sacrificing less performance and throttle response than they used to. The latest European turbodiesels have horsepower curves much like those of a gas engine, so they don’t completely run out of breath at 2500 rpm the way diesels used to, and they put out gobs of torque (our 1.9 JTD has 203 foot-pounds).

Our 156’s engine redlined at only 4,000 rpm, but it built power steadily from idle right to that redline, like you’d expect an Alfa engine to. You could downshift and rev it to the redline for passing, unlike my other cousin’s 1977 Mercedes 300D, which we drove across Europe many years ago. On two-lane roads in Umbria and Tuscany we were able to pass slower cars at will, which never used to be possible in the typical, underpowered European rental car. On the autostrada we cruised effortlessly at 140 kph (90 mph), the engine turning 3000 rpm and with power to spare. British press reviews give 119 mph as the 156 1.9 JTD’s top speed, its 0-60 mph acceleration time at 10 seconds, and its mixed cycle fuel mileage at 48.7 miles per imperial gallon. That won’t tear up the pavement, but it will give any Alfetta still on American roads a run for the money. Among the gas-engined 156 models, the 2.0 JTS (with the 165-hp twin spark), does 0-100 kph (0-62 mph) in 8.3 seconds, and the GTA makes the same run in 6.4 seconds (top speed for those two cars, respectively, is 220 and 251 kph).

At the same time, the 156’s 1.9 JTD engine is not an Alfa engine but a corporate Fiat engine found in almost exactly the same shape in many other Fiat and Lancia models, as well as in several Alfa 147 variants. And for all the improved power delivery of the modern turbodiesel, there was just enough throttle and turbo lag and the exhaust note had just enough of a diesel rumble to remind you that you weren’t driving a gas engine (there was no diesel clatter, on the other hand). The 1.9 JTD is a satisfactory engine for real life Italian driving, but it does not stir the soul like an Alfa engine should.

In fairness to Alfa Romeo, the 1.9 JTD is the base 156 model. The gasoline models come with a choice of 1.6, 1.8, or 2-liter twin spark 16-valve engines that produce 120, 140, and 165 hp respectively. And the top-of-the-line 156 GTA’s V-6 has 3.2 liters and those 250 horses. There are more powerful turbodiesel models too: a 16-valve 1.9 with 150 hp and a 175 hp, 20-valve, 5-cylinder 2.4 liter. The price premium on those more powerful models is considerable, though. Our 156 1.9 JTD retails in Italy, according to Automobilismo, for €25,421. At $1.18 to the euro, that’s $29,996.78, but such comparisons are meaningless, since European retail prices include road, licensing, and sales taxes, which are much higher than in the U. S. (consider that a fifth-generation, 2-liter turbo, three-door Golf GTI retails for €25,894, 473 more than our 156, while a loaded 2006 Jetta retails in the States for $26,741, according to Road & Track). Here are the Italian retail prices (taxes included) for other 156 sedans:

(By comparison, a 24-valve V-6 Alfa Spider retails at €38,625, a BMW 330xi sedan at €43,450, and an M3 coupe at €61,750.)

So this is the modern Alfa sport sedan. Could it spearhead an Alfa revival in the States, as the 156 did in Europe during the last seven years? The answer is a definite no, because Alfa is already producing the 159, which replaces the 156. The Italian automobile press praised the 159 as a technological evolution and gradual improvement of the 156. There is some, but not much more trunk room. It keeps the distinctive Alfa grille, but the unique door latch treatment is gone. The character lines along the fenders are from the less pretty 166. Even if Alfa were to return to the U. S. market today, American roads will never see the beautiful lines of the 156. The drivetrain packages that Alfa will offer in Italy in the 159 are mostly continuations of what the 2005 156 offered, so there will be no quantum leap in the new model’s performance image.

If Alfa returned to the U. S., could the new 159 be a success? The top of the line gasoline 159, the six-speed 2.2 JTS, has a 185 hp, 16-valve, 2.2 liter, twin spark engine (20 more horses and 200 cc more than the 156 16-valve 2.0 JTS). But at 1,490 kilos (3,278 lbs) it also weighs 300 kilos (660 lbs) more than the 156. In the Italian market, the 159 2.2 JTS will retail at €33,250. That places it in direct competition with an Audi A4 1.8T (€33,800), a BMW 320i (€32,950), a Mercedes C200 Kompressor (€34,820), and a Saab 9-3 2.0 Vector (€33,500). Those are cars with solid followings in our market. It is hard to picture the new 159 selling in significant numbers in a U. S. market where the Alfa Romeo marque is unfamiliar to most people, and when it is recognized, it is as a producer of sports cars. Still, the choice of small sporty sedans, something that fits between Golfs and Civics on the one hand and Passats and Accords on the other, is limited in the U. S. Alfa could find a niche in the Snow Belt (where front-wheel drive is important) among drivers who need four doors and yet want to maintain at least some handling agility. Bill Murray’s Don Johnston might still hanker for a Porsche, but at least he wouldn’t be a stalker in a Taurus anymore.