I also heard that warning about Alfa Romeos. I drove mine 124K miles over 11 years with normal maintenance (all easily DIY) and only one failure in that time (a Bosch distributor broke internally, so nothing Alfa-specific).

If a long-term owner told you that, by all means consider it; if a non-owner (including a mechanic) tells you second/third-hand horror stories, I’d be pretty inclined to ignore them.

I agree on non-owners, but an experienced independent mechanic who knows the marque is probably your best bet for reliability information. Non-owners usually don't know anything, and you'll always have lucky and unlucky owners, but the specialty mechanics see the cars day in and day out and know their issues.

But the specialty mechanic has an incentive to lie, if he thinks you're going to bring the car to him for service. ;)

I almost bought an alfa romeo once, but I was too young and didn't think I'd be able to be a garage mechanic at all. I vividly recall the guy had so many parts thrown in for free, he just got too old to lie underneath his car. It's a purchase I still regret to have passed on.

I've owned two Alfas (one of which I still have). The reputation for poor reliability is very well deserved in my experience, and we are very well known by the local mechanics. It varied a bit by model - but overall I think it's a fair assessment.

Like so many things these reputations form for good reasons - you may get lucky and have no particular problems with an individual example but that doesn't mean the reputation isn't deserved.

It depends greatly on the model AND on the country it was made for (the ones made for export were much better than "italian local market" ones).

As (by now historical) anecdata I owned an Alfetta (2000, gasoline, "America") for several years (used 50% with my father) we made 250,000 km with the original engine, then we put an used (from a wreckage) one with alredy 66,000 km and drove it for another 100,000 km or so when we had an issue with the gearbox/transmission and the car was overall too old to be worth the repair, but the body was in very good condition (car was around 15 years old).

Later I drove for a few years a 75 (bought used with already 90,000 km, "italian") and while I had no particular issues (engine and mechanics in general) up to the 150,000/200,000 km, the body had lots of issues with rust/corrosion after 6-7 years.

I would not call any of them "unreliable", they needed some little maintenance, but I would say no more than other make/models of those years (those were the '80's and early '90's).

Later Alfa Romeo became essentially "FIAT with another name" and reliability was essentially the same as the FIATs (rather poor, but not as bad as they are sometimes depicted).

There was an interview with Gordon Murray, where he was comparison testing supercars of the era while designing the McLaren F1...his comment on the Ferarri F40 (I think) was "well, we realized we couldn't build one in our shop if we tried, because we didn't have anyone that would weld that badly..."

Modern Ferraris are actually pretty reliable as supercars go. A few years ago Ferrari started included free maintenance for any new Ferrari for 7 years, so most owners are only really paying for tires and gas.

Not to say the cars are perfect, but most owners end up with relatively hassle-free ownership experiences these days.