Should GTV6 Engine Numbers Match the VIN?

["John Hertzman" <johnhertzman@domain.elided>]

Yesterday Bob Brady asked: "I looked at an '86 GTV6 last weekend.  The owner
claimed the engine was original, but the number stamped on it did not match
the VIN.  Should it have?"

In adverts for upscale Alfas I see "matching numbers" almost as often as
"body-off restoration", which is a neat trick with integral construction.
Can't say for sure about '86 GTV 6s, but the build-sheet ("Ordine di
Consegna") for our 164 lists 'Telaio' (chassis) 6193546 and 'N.Motore'
0017683, and the firewall plate for the oldest Alfa I owned, a 1958 750 B, is
stamped 1493 06319 in the 'Autotelaio' space and 1315 05718 in the 'Motore'
space. A quick look at the tables in Fusi shows matching numbers through 1931,
matching numbers on all except the G.P cars through 1935, matching on some but
not all in '36 and a few in 1937, none in 1938, starting again with some but
not all 1900s in 1950, (generally the 100% Portello Berlinas, not the
farmed-out Sprints) and a few as late as 1958 with the last of the 1900 Super
Sprints, and none that I noticed on any Giuliettas or later cars.

It would seem that matching engine numbers and chassis number (and numbers of
other subassemblies) would have been essential in the era of bespoke cars,
when it would be important for the manufacturer and the client that the
specified engine and specified chassis (and rear axle, etc) come together in
final assembly. In an era of more generic cars and more generic engines it
would still be important to the manufacturer to have numbered engines and
numbered chassis (so that process can be tracked, fault sources identified,
etc) but otherwise when getting a batch of numbered hulls from Pininfarina and
a batch of numbered engines from the engine shop it would be a pain, and
pointless, to be running around the warehouse looking for the engine with the
matching number for a particular hull. The easy fix would be to build
unnumbered engines and stamp the numbers at the time of fitting, but that has
no utility for tracking the sources of quality control problems. Unless
somebody explained a different logic to me for some particular group of cars I
would tend to assume that on a later car "matching numbers" meant that the
original engine had been replaced by an unoriginal blank replacement block on
which someone had stamped numbers copied from the VIN number on the ID tag.
But that is my guess, and only that. Anybody?

John H.
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