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Alfa Romeo has produced luxury sedan for quite a while now, but even the latest and most advanced models, like the 164 or 166 were not a market success. This is mostly due to the fact that the luxury sedan market is severely dominated by German brands, such as Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz. The German build quality and reliability were never matched by the Italians. Since always the main attributes of the Italian cars were the extraordinary design and the sporty feeling. Such attributes made success possible for cars like the Maserati Quattroporte.

But, why didn’t the same rule apply for the big Alfas? First of all that famous Italian design, was not at its best on the 164 or the 166. Second of all, front wheel drive has serious performance limitation, placing the big Alfas seriously behind the rear wheel drive BMWs and Mercedes or the AWD Audi Quattros.

In order to correct those issues, Alfa will borrow the excellent Maserati Quattroporte transaxle platform, and use it to produce a veritable sports sedan to be named 169. The expected engines are two brand new V6s one running on gasoline and the other one on diesel. Also new will be an entry level V8 with around 350 bhp. The top of the range 169 GTA is expected to use the 450 bhp V8 currently fitted in the 8C Competizione, matched with an automatic gearbox.

Not much information was made available so far, regarding the design of the new Alfa, but we still managed to produce some computer images, that represent o possible interpretation of the future model. Although, no official declarations were made, the Alfa Romeo 169 is expected to debut as a concept in 2009, production following later.

Source: Internal