Who says, there isn't an
"Alfa Romeo 168"?

by Jochen "Ty" Tydecks

Naturally there is a "168", as the Alfa Romeo advertisement on this page shows.
And that is not a misprint.

The story is very simple - for chinese people. Their life is influenced by numbers,
by "good" ones like 1, 2, 3, 6, 8 and 9 and "bad" ones like 4, 5 and 0.

In cantonese speaking regions like Hong Kong, Singapore, Guangzhou and also in Malaysia the number 4 ("sei") is the most unlucky number - because it means "death" or "die". Naturally so it wasn't able to sell cars of the type 164 ("yat low sei" = always die) in this area and the few buyers immediately removed the plate "164" from their cars. When Alfa Romeo heared about this, the company changed the designation for the market of South East Asia and our normal Alfa Romeo 164 was officially named as "168" - with an 8 at the end.

Now everyone was happy - because the 8 is pronounced in the cantonese language as "faht" which is similar to the word "prosperity". Together with the 1 ("yat" = always) and the 6 ("low" = long life and healthy) nothing can go wrong. Buy a "yat low faht" and be lucky - that sounds not only for chinese people very much better.


Alfa advertisement
in the "New Straits Times"
Malaysia





Also other car producers have luck with the Eight. For example the Porsche 928 ("kow yee faht" = long easy prosperity), the Ferrari 328 ("samm yee faht" = life of easy prosperity) and the Ferrari 348 (samm sei faht" = life of prosperity till you die).

Not only Alfa had problems with the unlucky Four - the Porsche 924 is a "kow yee sai" (enough easy death) and the 944 a "kow sei sei" (enough double death) - so both cars are naturally extremely rare in places like Hong Kong. Also the 944 turbo of Chris Royn in California is actually a "951" - so no bad luck there.

Very rich people pay as much as they pay for their Rolls Royce to get a car plate with "good" numbers. But too much of a good is dangerous, as the sample of one of the richest men in Malaysia shows. His Jaguar has the plate "BBB 888" and when he had to go bust, people said that there were to many Eights on his car - because "BBB" is also looking like "888". Also outside of China the 168-plate is demanded - because of orders from abroad these plates are out of stock by chinese Alfa dealers.

Some years ago two soviet-made TU aircrafts bearing the type number "514" crashed on separate occasions in China. People associated this bad luck with the bad number, which means "I'll die" or "it wants me to die". No people in China want to ride in this type of airplanes now. And goods are widely priced as $ 1.88 instead of ending with 9 as in our countries.

I just found an article, which is published by my friend Peter Dyrelund in the magazin of the danish Alfaclub. You can see pictures of a 168, taken by V.Korsgaard in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. The plate of this car carries the number 1434 and Charles, who is living in Malaysia, told me that this means "sure die, alive die". That can only be the car of a stranger.

Well, friends of the 164 - do you have problems with your car? Send me an email, maybe I find a 168-plate for you one day.

I wish you "yat low yee faht".
Ciao. Ty.





Thanks to Alessandro from New Jersey, Chris from California and especially to my friend Charles in Malaysia for their information to this story.





Last update: 13th of april, 1997 © Jochen "Ty" Tydecks / Hamburg, Germany