{"id":74779,"date":"2021-07-13T14:12:47","date_gmt":"2021-07-13T14:12:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.secret-classics.com\/?p=74779"},"modified":"2021-07-23T07:55:03","modified_gmt":"2021-07-23T07:55:03","slug":"50-years-of-lancia-stratos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.secret-classics.com\/en\/50-years-of-lancia-stratos\/","title":{"rendered":"50 Years of Lancia Stratos"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Strictly speaking, this story starts earlier than 1971. Three months earlier. Or a year and a half? The fact is that Nuccio Bertone, head of the design house of the same name, bought a Lancia Fulvia from a friend in 1969. However, he didn’t want to use this car as a new daily, but rather use it as the basis for a new concept car. Until then, Lancia had mainly used Pininfarina and Zagato as designers. Bertone wanted to call himself into mind and asked his designer Marcello Gandini for the styling of an extraordinarily wedge-shaped vehicle for this purpose. This finally debuted in October 1970 at the Turin Motor Show as the Stratos 0 (read “Stratos Zero”). Compared to the base vehicle, everything was changed right down to the chassis, which now had a mid-engine design. There, behind the two passengers, sat the 1.6-liter V4 engine with around 115 hp. You could only get in and out if you opened the huge windshield and climbed over the front section.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From concept to rally car<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Unlike many other concept cars, the Lancia Stratos 0 was completely functional. In February 1971, Nuccio Bertone was thus able to respond directly to a telephone call from Lancia headquarters and drive to the motorsport department on its own to demonstrate the car. There the engineers around Cesare Fiorio quickly recognized the potential of the mid-engine concept. Amazingly, however, they didn’t think of a competitor for the sports car class on the racetrack. Instead, Lancia planned a mid-engine sports car as compact as possible as a thoroughbred rally car in Group 4. Up until this point in time, there had only been further developed series vehicles from the lower middle class and middle class for rallying, rarely disturbed by sports cars like the Porsche 904 Carrera GTS and 911 or the Alpine A110. However, the fact that a manufacturer planned a new rally car on a blank sheet of paper and then domesticated it for road traffic was completely new territory.<\/p>\n\n\n

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