The Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale Is Now 100 Per Cent More Blue

We car people love it when we can link one of our beloved models to a particular date. Just take a look at the various global gatherings of AE86 Toyotas on 6 August every year – 8/6, geddit? (Really, in Europe, that should be happening on 8 June, but we digress).

You get the same thing happening with particular BMW chassis codes. Basically, if any car has a combination of numbers in its name that can be construed as a date, we’ll jump on it as an excuse to come together with fellow enthusiasts of the same car.

Car companies themselves are even climbing aboard the bandwagon. Alfa Romeo has just declared that 3 March will henceforth be ‘33 Stradale Day’, an annual celebration of the firm’s stunning new limited-edition supercar as well as the ’60s icon that inspired it.

Starting this Sunday, the date will apparently become an annual tradition for Alfa enthusiasts and owners’ clubs the world over, although we wouldn’t expect too many actual 33 Stradales to turn up at any gatherings: only 33 of the new car will be built, and the original is even rarer, with just 18 units produced.

Really, the date just seems to be an excuse for Alfa to show off some new images of the 33 Stradale in the previously unseen shade of Blu Reale (Royal Blue). It’s a colour that previously featured on a single example of the original 33 Stradale, and is one of three base colour options on the new car along with traditional Rosso Alfa and the deeper, more lustrous Rosso Villa d’Este (although Alfa will probably paint it any colour you please if you throw enough money at it).

In case you needed a reminder, the new 33 Stradale was revealed last autumn and will go into production later this year. Its buyers had the choice of either a 3.0-litre twin-turbo V6 with upwards of 620bhp or a full electric drivetrain, and all 33 units were spoken for soon after its launch.

The original 33 Stradale, meanwhile, was produced between 1967 and 1969, sharing lots of parts with the Tipo 33 racer. It had a 2.0-litre V8 and was the first-ever road car with a six-speed manual gearbox.

Elsewhere, Alfa has gone full numerology on us, pointing out that the brand grew by 33 per cent between 2022 and 2023 and that 33 months ago, an Alfa won 2021’s historic Mille Miglia re-enactment. Far out, man.

We probably won’t be getting a new bank holiday to mark 33 Stradale Day, but if nothing else, Alfa will probably take the opportunity to shower us with an annual deluge of 33 content, which can’t be a bad thing.