Beauty of a Beast: Driving the Raucous 1975 Lancia Stratos HF
Meet the toughest little delinquent ever set loose on public highways.
[This story first appeared in the Fall 2011 issue of MotorTrend Classic] [Photos by Stanley Eastman] We’re shooting the last image at the last location of the last day: the little red-orange Lancia in the muted shadows of the company’s former Turin offices and factory, an eye-grabbing splash of pre-spring color on a cityscape still dabbled by residues of late winter snow. The bold confidence of the modern office tower spans the width of Via Vincenzo Lancia, with the elegance of the old classic-columned factory gates resting alongside. The sweeping, contoured wedge of the Stratos combines the flavor of each with typically Italian flair.
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But there seems to be something missing, and I can’t put my finger on it—until I turn and walk back toward the driver’s seat, the crowning photo snapped, and notice what’s behind the Stratos. It’s a wall of graffiti, the rambling, slapdash kind, thrown up by a dissatisfied, disaffected, restless, or merely bored youth.
Ah, yes; that’s what’s missing. The sneer. The anarchy and turmoil. The pent-up, surly, arrogant energy. That’s what makes the Stratos different. It’s a fast, beautiful, quintessentially Italian-school exotic, Ferrari-powered, Bertone-designed, and impeccably pedigreed. But it’s also a raucous, defiant, angry car, a snot-nosed punk with a chip on his shoulder car, its every action raw and intense, and more than a little intimidating.
And it could only have emerged from Torino. Italy’s urban Motor City is also Italy’s historic, cultured Royal City; classical form coexists here side by side with cold industrial function, all plopped smack on the doorstep of the world’s greatest natural proving grounds, the Italian Alps. Exciting things are bound to come from a melting pot like this.
A touch of ordinary avarice doesn’t hurt, either, and that’s exactly where the Stratos story began. By the late 1960s, Nuccio Bertone was running out of stuff to sell. Production work was dwindling for Carrozzeria Bertone, and his best bet for continued prosperity was designing and building a new low-volume, high-performance flagship for Lancia & C., one of the oldest and most respected names in the industry, recently saved from insolvency by proletarian Fiat and struggling to find its feet. Bertone’s only problem was how to inform unsuspecting Lancia it needed a flagship, before somebody else (like perennial rival Pininfarina) got there first.
So he bought a used Fulvia, handed it to staff designer Marcello Gandini, a 30-ish Turinese who had previously styled the acclaimed Lambo Miura, and told him to quietly whip it into something Lancia couldn’t ignore. Gandini kept the driveline and trashed the rest, then drew up the absolute tiniest mid-engine doorstop that would hold two humans, and Bertone paraded the result at the 1970 Turin show. It was originally called Project Zero, but apparently someone saw a cool label on a model airplane kit in the styling studio, and said, “Hey, guys, how about we name it Stratos...”
Bertone was ready when the phone call came from Lancia (“Listen, what’s this damn thing you’re showing with our badge on it?”). The Stratos, unlike many concept cars, was a genuine runner, despite being so low you had to enter through a tilt-up windshield. When Nuccio took the car to his meeting with Lancia Corporate he drove straight under the closed traffic barrier behind those classic-columned factory gates.
His timing was providential. Influential motorsport boss Cesare Fiorio, also 30-ish and Turinese, had been furrowing his brow over a replacement for the successful but aging Fulvia HF rally cars, and reckoned a fresh, limited-production two-seater might be exactly the ticket—provided it was designed for competition from the very first sheet of paper, unlike the then-prevailing norm. Gandini got approval to move from concept to prototype in early 1971, and when the Lancia execs saw the Stratos, it was all but a done deal.
It’s worth noting here that Marcello Gandini didn’t merely style the Stratos. He engineered it top to bottom, and what he put into the original prototype—painted a searing, matte-finish red-orange—almost precisely became the final model. He started with a central monocoque safety cage, added front and rear subframes, a mid-mounted, transverse V-6 Dino engine and five-speed from Fiat stablemate Ferrari, all-adjustable control-arm suspension, four-wheel discs, and hinged clamshell bodywork.
It was so close to pure race ready that the only fundamental changes made after Lancia snatched it up were fiberglass panels in place of aluminum, and hardier Chapman struts out back. This being the car business, there were complications, of course. The Dino 246 engine proved a political football, and not because of Enzo, but because of resistance from Fiat powertrain management, and legend says the supply only unfroze when Lancia asked Maserati if it might also care to bid.
There were homologation issues as well. The FIA required just 500 units to qualify for the new World Rally Championship in Group. The Stratos was truly one of the great rally success stories, and killed the mass-production-based international rally car as dead as the eight-track tape.
As a commercial enterprise, however, its record is somewhat less miraculous. The road version, the Stradale, was retail roadkill—there are dealers out there who still awaken screaming about the Car That Couldn’t Be Sold. The bare-bones Stratos was similarly priced to a spiffy GT Ferrari and was never certified as strictly road-legal in most European countries, let alone Ferrari’s happy hunting ground, the USA.
Furthermore, the term “bare-bones” is way too flattering; Lancia obviously considered the Stratos merely an expendable tool and didn’t care about consumer sales, and the example we’re driving says it all.
When the time came to homologate fat-tired rear bodywork, they grabbed this car off the assembly line, attacked it with tin snips, pop rivets, and fiberglass, and eventually parked it in the company’s press/museum fleet and walked away. It’s there still, now an elder statesman. Technically, this otherwise standard Stradale is the official prototype for all the invincible Group 4 champions.
Like every other road Stratos, it’s a fantastic 30-foot car, but up close, it’s no match for the thoroughbred Lancias of old. The fiberglass is the thinnest possible without flapping in the breeze; the interior is a bare, loud, basically unventilated combination of tissue-paper carpeting, go-kart seats, and econo-Fiat accessories; and whereas even Gandini’s first proto had cable-release decklids and a classy gated shifter, the Stradale makes do with a rubber-booted stick and cheap external latches.
But, oh, mercy, does it go. Crack open the throttle somewhere down in that convoluted footbox so the triple twin-choke Webers can draw breath, turn the nondescript Fiat key, and an almighty sex-charged whoop assaults your right ear. First gear is dogleg-left, racecar fashion; reverse, should you unfortunately need it, is somewhere above in a frustrating bucket of mush, but the four slots useful in the real world are well-positioned and sprint-car-ratioed. Throttle response is superb. So are the low-speed steering and stubby, short-wheelbase agility, and if rear vision weren’t nonexistent, this would be a street fighter of epic renown.
The Stratos’ rally-bred mission statement, however, was the mountain road dash, and out in open country it is completely orgasmic, and never mind your preconceptions about “only” 187 horsepower. In the golden zone above four grand, the engine is a living, screaming force of nature, determined to squeeze you into the skimpy upholstery until your innards groan. The chassis turns in at the very movement of your eyeballs toward the apex; this car isn’t an extension of your body, it is your body, and fast enough is never fast enough.
Until somewhere among those hot transitions between stupidly fast corners it twitches with a chillingly nonchalant malevolence, a short, sharp reminder of its Jekyll and Hyde reputation. You have enjoyed all the happy, friendly 95 percent of its capabilities, and if you go higher, you’d better be as good as the pros it was intended for, and the margin separating control from instantaneous oversteer is perishingly thin in the last few ticks.
That’s the secret of the Stratos: It isn’t a race car turned supercar, it’s just a race car, and if you’re not a race car driver, the machine will eventually make that abundantly clear to you. The wise will, at this point, coast to an adrenaline-overloaded, sweaty-palmed stop, and contemplate both their own mortality and what might have been, if Lancia had given this snarling hooligan the finishing attention it deserved.
That never happened. Convinced the beautiful beast was a poor corporate P.R. investment in the long run, Fiat switched its rally emphasis in 1977 to the more mass-appeal 131 Abarth, and the Stratos program, road and rally alike, withered. Thirty-odd years on, Lancia’s brand identity has shifted back to the style and comfort image of its earliest days, and current plans for the future revolve around platform-sharing with Fiat partner Chrysler. Company ops and admin have long since relocated from the Via Vincenzo Lancia properties. Of the anger and danger and rebellion, only the graffiti remains.
Ask the Man Who Owns One
Automotive designer Chris Hrabalek, 30-ish and Austrian, became a Stratos fanatic upon receiving his first toy example at age 3. He’s the world’s foremost Stratos authority and collector, as well as the creative vision and energy behind the New Stratos. His collection includes the Gandini prototype and the sole surviving Group 5 Silhouette Turbo.
Why I like it: “In 1970, this car was a spaceship. Even now, more than 40 years later, the basic design themes are still contemporary, and I suspect will be in another 40 years, too.”
Why it’s collectible: “It was the world’s first purpose-build rally car and combined three great brands of the day: Lancia, Ferrari, and Bertone. The compact, short-wheelbase dimensions and light weight mean that in rally trim there’s very little still that could overtake one in full flight on a twisty mountain road. The Stratos is a pure Italian automotive thoroughbred at its best.”
Restoring/maintaining: “Specialists who truly know the Stratos are disappearing, and while the mechanicals are simple enough, straight off the Fiat-Ferrari shelf, what’s hard is restoring one to period spec. Most trim and detail parts are no longer available. Doing a 95- or even 99-percent job is easy; the difficulty’s that last 1 percent of originality.”
Beware: “It’s difficult to find really nice, unmolested, and unmodified cars, either original Stradali or Group 4 racers. Most Stratos these days are a mixture of both road and race cars, neither here nor there. Either a low-mileage road car or a rally car with history makes the best investment.” “Until very recently, street cars were around 250,000 Euros [about $330,000]; the last few traded, though, have been significantly higher, so the market may be shifting. Group 4 cars depend on the degree of racing history, with the best works cars having long passed the one-million Euro mark.”
Stratos in Competition
Gandini’s Stratos design was remarkably close to race-ready out of the box; the hard work of making it win-ready fell largely to former Lamborghini tech director Gian Paolo Dallara and late British driver and engineer Mike Parkes. Under their development, the car’s early suspension weaknesses were cured, and power rose steadily from the base 187 horses to a peak of some 280. Lancia even built a pair of turbocharged, silhouette-bodied Group 5 circuit racers (fearsome, but unreliable) that wrung 560 horsepower from the Dino motor.
Regardless of power, though, handling a competition Stratos required monumental talent. Works driver Sandro Munari, Stratos winner of three Monte Carlo rallies and the first ever WRC driver’s championship, is so closely identified with the car, it’s said the cockpit was modeled after his personal dimensions. In sheer victories, however, Munari is eclipsed by French privateer Bernard Darniche, with 33, and it was Darniche who scored the car’s last headline coup, the 1979 Monte, three years after the factory bowed out. It took the arrival in 1982 of a whole new generation, the notorious Group B, to fully retire the Stratos, and by the following season, Lancia had topped that, too, with the 037.