The door pockets of the Lancia Stratos are designed to carry your crash helmet. A key Stratos fact that tells you all you need to know: that this is form follows function competition car design taken to its extremes. You’ll have needed those helmets on this distinguished 1979 example, now up for sale, because it has that most desirable of Stratos attributes: a rally-winning competition history.
So this Lancia Stratos is special. But then every Lancia Stratos is special. Design was by Marcello Gandini for Bertone, and when a prototype was first shown to Lancia, the Stratos was so low it could pass under the barrier at the factory gates. Tiny and looking like nothing else either before or since, each Stratos is powered by a Ferrari V6 engine, so not only is it as brutally fast as its looks are brutalist - think 140 mph over a rally stage - but it sounds sensational too.
Gandini designed the Lancia Stratos for one thing and one thing only: to win World Rally Championships. The little wedge shaped machine did that with aplomb, winning three in quick succession in 1974, 1975 and 1976. The Stratos you see here had its own share of rally wins in the Italian Rally Championship of 1979, with five victories. Concessionari Lancia livery is period correct, restored by its latest obsessive collector owner and ready, say the vendors, for its next historic rally outing.
That Ferrari V6 (legend has it that Enzo Ferrari would only sell Lancia 500 units) is snugly mid-mounted, easily viewed and worked on by your rally crew by opening the rear clamshell of the Lancia Stratos. Front clamshell bonnet opens to reveal suspension components that might need fettling. Gandini played a similar trick on another masterpiece, the Lamborghini Miura, which also shares the Lancia’s louvred rear window. A Miura and a Stratos in a dream garage? Yes, please.
Interior is all business in the Lancia, as you’d expect from a rally-hardened machine. Switchgear is labelled in red. Black Alcantara-faced bucket seats will hold you and your navigator tight around every curve. There were a few road-going Lancia Stratos models made, so you might even be able to register this one so that you can take it on the weekly shopping run. Those door pockets might come in useful for grocery bags, since there’s not much else in the way of storage space.
Lancia Stratos prices are on the up. So you wouldn’t expect this distinguished example of one of the greatest rally cars ever made to be cheap. Vendors Schaltkulisse of Munich insist price is strictly on enquiry only. Recent auction results suggest you’ll need in excess of £600,000 to make this rally winning Lancia Stratos all yours. Sell the house, mortgage the cat: this Lancia Stratos really is that special.
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