Alfa 156 taxi (!!) in Dublin

pburns

Has anyone seen the dark red 156 taxi around Dublin city centre? It has a big luminous sticker on the back door handle to help people find it! Maybe there's more than one of these (?) It seems almost sacrilege...

Rode in it once actually but was late for a meeting and in no mood to engage the driver in chit-chat...

What I'd like to know is how the hell does a car with the 156's reputation end up as a taxi?!?!?!?? I know it's cheap but for the same money you could buy a very servicable old Toyota that would go on forever.

prospect

It is probably a diesel.
The Fiat JTD engine is one of the best diesel engines in the world.

redman

The driver must like driving then!:D

phoenix_nights

Without offending Alfa lovers, he probably bought it like people still buy them nowadays. Probably did not know enough about the cars.

I am biased here but i own the same car which is (as far as i can see) the most popluar 'old' taxi that they use. These guys understand cars a bit more as these cars are renowned for there reliabilty. They can, once oil and coolant is changed regularly, go past the 500mile mark and have.

Any guesses...

The W124

pburns wrote:

Has anyone seen the dark red 156 taxi around Dublin city centre? It has a big luminous sticker on the back door handle to help people find it! Maybe there's more than one of these (?) It seems almost sacrilege...

Rode in it once actually but was late for a meeting and in no mood to engage the driver in chit-chat...

What I'd like to know is how the hell does a car with the 156's reputation end up as a taxi?!?!?!?? I know it's cheap but for the same money you could buy a very servicable old Toyota that would go on forever.

yellow012

Just saw one of these being used as a taxi in Dublin.

Sure beats being driven around in a scabby 15 year old Merc, Toyota, Nissan..:)

Eoin

A strange choice alright, not much room in the back for three and a small enough boot.

I also saw one, and the driver had put illuminous stripes on the rear door handles and arrows pointing to them; presumably people had been trying to climb through the front to get in the back.

phoenix_nights

I see one guy is driving around in a Prius .

ds20prefecture

eoin_s wrote:

A strange choice alright, not much room in the back for three and a small enough boot.

I'd agree, but then the Octavia is tiny in the rear too, and there's hundreds of those in use as taxis.

There's thousands of 156s in use as taxis and police cars in Italy. Perhaps the Italians don't know enough about cars.....

magpie

I've been in the very same taxi (replete with luminous arrows pointing to door handles) and asked the guy in polite terms why the **** he was driving such a piece of **** as a taxi since it was going to fall apart after about 6 months. Nice bloke driving it, Palestinian, said he already had the car before he started taxi-ing and that he was going to drive it until it disintegrated, and then go and buy a Merc.

Mystery solved. Move along, there's nothing more to see here....

phoenix_nights

magpie wrote:

and then go and buy a Merc.

Smart man.

Anan1

magpie wrote:

I've been in the very same taxi (replete with luminous arrows pointing to door handles) and asked the guy in polite terms why the **** he was driving such a piece of **** as a taxi since it was going to fall apart after about 6 months. Nice bloke driving it, Palestinian, said he already had the car before he started taxi-ing and that he was going to drive it until it disintegrated, and then go and buy a Merc.

Mystery solved. Move along, there's nothing more to see here....

Have you had a bad experience with a 156? I can see no reason why a well-serviced one shouldn't just go and go. It is a bit small in the back but, as has been already stated, so is an Octavia.

prospect

magpie wrote:

why the **** he was driving such a piece of **** as a taxi since it was going to fall apart after about 6 months.

Aaahh, the perpetual monotonous drone of the uneducated!
:rolleyes:

Ratchet

seen the 156 and was petrol also seen 4dr 94 civic which looked mad with taxi sign on the roof

sharkman

OK , So to take this in a different direction .....

What's the nicest Taxi youve been in ???????

Volvoboy

one lives on my road silver nice looking, seen alot stranger cars as a joe

-lexus ls430
-volvo xc90
-mercedes s320 (newer model 99-)
-bmw 740
-jag xj6
-nissan pathfinder jeep
-fiat punto

RobAMerc

phoenix_nights wrote:

Without offending Alfa lovers, he probably bought it like people still buy them nowadays. Probably did not know enough about the cars.

This is probably the biggest load of toss I have ever read on Boards.ie

Lex Luthor

magpie wrote:

why the **** he was driving such a piece of **** as a taxi since it was going to fall apart after about 6 months..

:mad: So what do you drive, big shot?

bazz26

I can understand the luminous stripes on the rear doors alright.

Can you image at around 3 am on a Sunday morning, a couple of well pissed people on the way home from the pub, having to look for the rear door handle of the taxi in the dark!

Max_Damage

I've seen a Mercedes 500SEL and a Lexus LS400 as taxi's (fuel bills must be fun to look at!)

And they complain about not getting enough money.....tiff!

Squirrel

For a lot of the more expensive cars the owners have bought a taxi plate so they can drive in the bus lanes, or so I read a while back. It could have been on a thread here, I don't really remember.

Lex Luthor

Squirrel wrote:

For a lot of the more expensive cars the owners have bought a taxi plate so they can drive in the bus lanes, or so I read a while back. It could have been on a thread here, I don't really remember.

ahem, Michael O'Leary:cool:

RoundyMooney

ds20prefecture wrote:

There's thousands of 156s in use as taxis and police cars in Italy. Perhaps the Italians don't know enough about cars.....

[Flame Suit] Given some of the crap they churn out, it would appear they don't, at least in terms of engineering longevity, reliability ,and useability into their products. They are, collectively, the British Leyland of the modern era of motoring.

And before the Alfa aficionados sharpen their knives-I bought a 156 *new* in 2001. I gave up on it a year and a half later, and lost a bomb. All the cars Fiat are churning out, and the group is still in financial difficulty...[/Flame Suit]

In the interests of fairness, someone posted up pictures of the new 159 the other day, and I wet my pants a little. It is the most beautiful design I have seen when compared against any mainstream saloon car of the last thirty years. Sad to say, I will never buy one, not even when they are five years old and relatively worthless.

As always YMMV...

junkyard

That taxi driver won't have to wait for long for that Alfa to disintegrate using it as a taxi, its like using a cardboard box to cross the channel.:D

RoundyMooney

junkyard wrote:

That taxi driver won't have to wait for long for that Alfa to disintegrate using it as a taxi, its like using a cardboard box to cross the channel.:D

Shhh, Junk. We'll get flamed in a minute

"They don't like it up 'em, Captain Mainwaring!"

All in good fun, folks.

edit: Actually, the one problem I haven't seen on Fiats et al., at least in the last few years, is rust. Am I not getting out enough, or is corrosion not as big a deal as it was?

Max_Damage

RoundyMooney wrote:

In the interests of fairness, someone posted up pictures of the new 159 the other day, and I wet my pants a little. It is the most beautiful design I have seen when compared against any mainstream saloon car of the last thirty years. Sad to say, I will never buy one, not even when they are five years old and relatively worthless.

As always YMMV...

Best thing to do there is to get a 159 and do a engine swap with some Japanese car. Problem solved!:D

junkyard

And then do a body swap with a Toyota or something that doesn't fall apart.:) The reason for no rust Roundy is that most cars nowadays are galvanised.

pburns

I notice a fair proportion of taxis are petrol rather than diesel. I've seen Maximas, Camrys and the like. I guess they're cheaper & less time/money off the road for servicing(?)

ds20prefecture

junkyard wrote:

That taxi driver won't have to wait for long for that Alfa to disintegrate using it as a taxi, its like using a cardboard box to cross the channel.:D

I saw my first post on boards about that taxi 2 years ago. So 2 years of constant day-in-day-out stop and go traffic. Pretty resilient cardboard.....

What a dull world ye live in.

RoundyMooney

ds20prefecture wrote:

I saw my first post on boards about that taxi 2 years ago. So 2 years of constant day-in-day-out stop and go traffic. Pretty resilient cardboard.....

What a dull world ye live in.

How do you know it's the same taxi? Here in Cork, there's one silver 156, that I'm aware of, doing the rounds. Law of averages would dictate that there are two or more, in Dublin. Even if it is the same car, when is the last time you heard of a Toyota/Nissan/Mercedes etc. suffering from the collective maladies of sunroofs flying off at speed, timing belts calving before their time (at 30k), breaking sun visors on a week old car, rear view mirrors that refuse to stay attached to the roof panel, noisy variators after six months, failed rear bushings after a year, sticky windows and switchgear, and sump cover panels that required renewing twice-without ever leaving a national primary route?

All of the above happened to me, enriching my life considerably, to use your analogy DS, and I have anecdotal evidence off, and latterly on the internet, of each and every experience of mine being shared by somebody somewhere who was taken in by the hype and the good looks of these lemons.

Don't have us believe these cars are as mechanically as well engineered as they look. That is frankly naive.

I respect totally the views of those who love Alfas or other FIAT products for what they are. I have no time for the bottom feeder who buys a '98 from a backstreet garage for widescreen TV money and then deems himself a petrolhead, and fools himself into thinking, "sure it's just as good as a 3 series, boy".

Santa Claus

yellow012 wrote:

Just saw one of these being used as a taxi in Dublin.

Sure beats being driven around in a scabby 15 year old Merc, Toyota, Nissan..:)

Hmmmm, a 70 odd thousand euro taxi.....bit of a wild guess here but I'm thinking perhaps the owner of that taxi could be connected to the criminal life (like when the monk was driving round in his Merc 500 SL with the taxi plate on it...great way of justifying shady earnings)

BrianD3

IIRC a few years ago there were Merc S-class taxis around with Nissan Urvan diesel engines fitted. Pretty common engine swap apparently. So if anyone was in a 560 SEL and it didn't sound quite right that was the reason