What do the numbers mean.

[smitti52]

May be a silly question but I was just wondering with Alfas do the numbers 156, 159, 147, 166 etc have any meaning or significance.
For instance with early Mecs the numbers related to the number of seats and cylinders and Jaguars the XK120
meant it was said to do 120MPH by makes.

[John Hanslow]

An Italian algorithm ? I actually thought the numbers sort of notes the series.  14x,  15x,  16x  based on vehicle size.
e.g. 155 became the 156 then 159. sedan
e.g. 145 then became the 146 & then 147. Mostly a hatch
e.g. 164 now 166 wich may be the 169   saloon.
The company is going back to using historical names again which is probaly a good thing.

Cheers.

[Evan Bottcher]

75 was the 75th anniversary of Alfa Romeo FWIW.  The jump from 156 to 159 I presume was to give the marketing bods something to work with - the historical connection with the Alfetta 159.

Any significance of the 33 ?

[spieret]

Any significance of the 33 ?

The number of cars that worked properly 

[John Hanslow]

I do not think one could confuse these cars, but like the Alfetta 159 reference .... and as for the comment on ancient ?

The 33, that took its name fom an ancient AR racing car named Model 33, has been produced in several versions though the real distinction has to be done between the pre-1990 and the after-1990 33s.

That was from the Alfa 33 web ring site.

[Sheldon McIntosh]

The 90 because it was designed to "carry the firm into the 1990s".  That worked out well...

[Stuart Thomson]

Yeah they put all their cash into one of those briefcases...

[colcol]

Re Alfa Romeo numbering system!, 75 celebrated the 75th year of car making, 90 was the car that was going to take Alfa into the 90's, the 155 replaced the 75, the 156 replaced the 155 [not sold in Australia], the 156 replacement was going to be the 157, but BMW and Peugeot objected because their cars have 7 in them, then it was going to be the 158, Ditto BMW and Peugeot claimed their cars have 8 in them, then it was called the 159 after the G.P. car of the early 50's, the 33 was named after their sports car from the late 60's early 70's that they raced at LE-MANS, the 147 replaced the 145-146 series, the 164-166 i have no idea, maybe it was a combo no one else used, i remember reading about the naming of cars, bread and butter cars are called Falcons and Camry's cause the owners can relate to names better, more hitech interesting cars are given numbers because they may relate to something technical, Colin.