Whether the Italians will to stick to the program remains to be seen, but given the recent developments with Maserati, including the introduction of the new Quattroprote and sightings of Ghibli prototypes, there's a good chance Fiat means it this time.
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Too bad the Fiat Group never really allocated the sources or the time to rebuild and refocus the famed Italian brand as a real premium automaker.
In fact, last we heard, Sergio Marchionne has kicked the can down the road (again…) postponing Alfa Romeo's re-entry to the U.S. market and delaying many of its planned models like the 159 replacement.
But we're dragging away from our main story that is a design study from an old acquaintance of CarScoop, Italian designer Marco Procaccini, who sent us these renderings and a video of his newest project.
To make a very long story short, Stephan’s solution to u the performance of his Alfa Romeo GTV V6 involved the fitment of a second six-cylinder engine at the back. Easier said than done of course, with the project turning out to be a rather complicated and time-consuming process.
Stephan documented the entire build on his company’s website and if our Google’s translation is correct (any help from our Dutch speaking readers would be appreciated, especially on the matter of the transmission), Stephan took a 3.2-liter V6 along with the sub frame and suspension bits from an Alfa Romeo 166 and placed them in the rear section of the Italian coupe. Together with the GTV’s front-mounted 3.0-liter V6, the two engines produce a combined output of 487-horsepower.
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If we are to believe Alfa Romeo’s product plan (see here), the Italian automaker will introduce the replacement for the unsuccessful 166 dubbed the 169, sometime in 2009. But until then we can show you a few design proposals for the 169 that were created by the students of the Polytechnic School of Design (SPD) in 
A total of 15 international students participated in the program creating nine different propositions: Ryu Seung-Wook (Korea), Gabriel Feyer (Brasil), Kostantinos Paradeisou (Greece), Ian Bunjak (Slovakia), Iulian Bumbu (Romania), Murat Atvur (Turkey), Adam Denning (USA), Mark Salerno (Australia), Tulay Engin (Turkey), James Edmund van der Merwe (South Africa), Artem Popkov (Russia), Franco Grassi (Italy), Alessandro Fiorentino (Italy) and Aleksej Ivaskievic (Russia). -See the Alfa 169 design proposals after the jump
Via: Virtualcar
According to the Fiat Group’s last product plan (see here), Alfa Romeo will present a successor to the already outdated 166 in 2009. The Italian carmaker’s top model will be named 169 and prices will start from a hefty €40,000 (approx $59k). Using an official black & white sketch that Alfa presented in 2006 as a base, the guys at the Italian website “Infomotori” created a series of renderings that attempt to give us a better view of the upcoming sport sedan’s design. We’ve no idea how close the renderings are to the final model, but to be honest, we’re pretty sure that Alfa’s designers will find a way to make us fall in love with the 169’s appearance. Question is, will Alfa’s engineers manage to do the same with the 169’s chassis and powertrain options? -More pics after the jump
