LANCIA Stratos

LANCIA SET OUT TO BUILD THE ULTIMATE, NO-COMPROMISE RALLY CAR FROM SCRATCH. THE RESULT WAS ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL AND LEGENDARY RACE AND ROAD CARS OF ALL TIME

- DAMION SMY

IMAGINE A state-of-the-art supersonic fighter jet being produced and its maker being told, “You have to sell 500 to the public before you can fly it”. That may sound ludicrous, yet it’s not far off what happened for the genuinely iconic, unorthodox and unstoppable 1973 Lancia Stratos HF Stradale. A mid-engined, compact spaceship penned by a Lamborghini designer and powered by a free-revving Ferrari engine, it was utterly gobsmacking – and a political struggle from the start.

This was not an existing road car modified to the extreme – the Stratos was created with the sole purpose of winning the newly instituted World Rally Championship (WRC). The result of Lancia’s motorsport ambition, the road version existed purely because it was mandated by FIA Group 4 regulations. Otherwise, this was a corner carving, hump jumping, snow, dirt and gravel king created from inception to take rallying by storm.

Competition had always been in Lancia’s psyche, Vincenzo Lancia a racing driver himself when he and engineer Claudio Fogolin formed the company in 1906. Yet with debts mounting, the struggling brand faced its second bankruptcy in as many decades before rival Fiat bought it in 1969.

While its new owners looked to reinvigorate the brand, there was immediate tension between the individuality of ‘La Lancia’ and corporate pragmatism of Fiat. It festered with the Stratos project, objectors wondering how a low-volume sports car would help return Lancia to profitability. That was before the oil crisis…

Across town Bertone was looking for a way into Lancia, too, as another rivalry was bubbling. Keen to steal a march on Pininfarina, Bertone’s Marcello Gandini, who gifted the world the Lamborghini Miura and then the Countach, daringly produced the wondrous, oh-so-seventies Stratos Zero concept.