Lancia Stratos

Lancia had traditionally worked with Pininfarina and had not previously used Bertone. Bertone sought to create an opportunity with Lancia and, aware that the manufacturer needed a replacement for the aging Fulvia for rally competition, decided to design an eye-catching model. Bertone's designer Marcello Gandini built a running model using the gear of a Fulvia Coupé. When Bertone himself appeared at the Lancia factory gates with the resulting Stratos Zero, he drove underneath the barrier to great applause from the workers. Lancia and Bertone then agreed to develop a new rally car based on Gandini's ideas. Gandini had already designed the Lamborghini Miura and was concurrently working on the Countach.

Lancia presented the Bertone-designed Stratos HF prototype at the 1971 Turin Motor Show, one year after the Stratos Zero concept had been shown there in 1970. The fluorescent red prototype (Chassis 1240) featured a distinctive crescent-shaped wrap-around windshield providing maximum forward visibility with almost no rear visibility. Three engines were used during early development: the Lancia Fulvia engine, the Lancia Beta engine, and finally the mid-mounted Dino Ferrari V6 producing 190 hp for the public launch. Use of that engine had been planned from the start, but Enzo Ferrari was reluctant to supply it for a car he viewed as a competitor to his own Dino V6. After Dino production ended, Ferrari agreed to deliver 500 engines to Lancia.

The final design shares several features with Gandini's Lamborghini Miura: dual clamshell hoods, the front opening forward over the spare wheel and the rear hinging rearward with stepped black louvres above the engine, plus door-glass bottoms that curve upward giving the frameless doors an upward-swept frame section. The Stratos received a distinctive short and wide wedge shape with the nose dropping below the tops of the front wheel wells, and a semi-elliptical greenhouse when seen from above.

The road car, sold as the Lancia Stratos HF Stradale, was manufactured by Bertone in Turin with final assembly at Lancia's Chivasso plant. Powered by the Dino 2.4 L V6 producing 190 PS (188 bhp) at 7,000 rpm and 226 N⋅m (166 lbf⋅ft) at 4,000 rpm, it reached 100 km/h in 6.8 seconds and a top speed of 232 km/h, initially on 205/70VR14 Pirelli Cinturato CN36 tires, later on 15-inch wheels with Pirelli Cinturato P7.

Competition cars weighed between 900 and 950 kilograms. Power output was approximately 275 hp for the original 12-valve version and 320 hp for the 24-valve version. Beginning with the 1978 season, 24-valve heads were banned from Group 4 by an FIA rule change, as re-homologation would have required additional production of 24-valve cars.

Production of the 500 cars required for Group 4 homologation commenced in 1973, and the car was homologated for the 1974 World Rally Championship season. The Ferrari Dino V6 engine was phased out in 1974 but 500 of the last examples were delivered to Lancia. Production ended in 1975, with a total of 492 cars made; the Group 4 production requirement was reduced to 400 in 24 months for the 1976 season.

The three leading figures behind the rallying project were Lancia team manager Cesare Fiorio, British racer and engineer Mike Parkes, and factory rally driver Sandro Munari. Marcello Gandini took a personal interest in designing and producing the bodywork. Calculations engineer Nicola Materazzi performed work on chassis, steering, suspension, and engine components.

Lancia undertook extensive testing and raced the car in Group 5 prototype events during 1972 and 1973. The car won the 1974, 1975 and 1976 WRC titles in the hands of Sandro Munari and Björn Waldegård. Munari also won the Monte Carlo Rally in 1975, 1976 and 1977. The private Chardonnet Team won the Monte Carlo Rally as late as 1979. Despite internal Fiat group politics shifting rallying focus to the Fiat 131 Abarth, the Stratos continued to win as a privateer entry. The last WRC victory came at the 1981 Tour de Corse, won by longtime Stratos privateer Bernard Darniche.

When the Fiat group redirected rally support to the Fiat 131, Lancia built two Group 5 turbocharged silhouette Stratos cars for closed-track endurance racing. Their powertrain and aerodynamics were engineered by Nicola Materazzi. These cars were unsuccessful against the Porsche 935 on closed tracks but proved competitive in hybrid events. The Stratos won the Tour de France Automobile five times between 1973 and 1980, and won the Giro d'Italia automobilistico in 1974, 1976 and 1978. One silhouette car was destroyed by fire at Zeltweg due to overheating. The surviving car won the Giro d'Italia again before being shipped to Japan for the Fuji Speedway-based Formula Silhouette series, which was never raced. That car was subsequently sold to collector Ernst Hrabalek, who assembled the largest known Lancia Stratos collection — 11 unique cars, including the fluorescent red 1971 factory prototype and the 1977 Safari Rally car.

The Stratos also achieved limited success at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, with a car driven by Christine Dacremont and Lella Lombardi finishing 20th overall and 2nd in the GTP class in 1976.

Austrian rallycross driver Andy Bentza raced a unique Group 5 Stratos that was first driven by his Memphis teammate Franz Wurz, father of Formula One driver Alexander Wurz. In 1976 Franz Wurz claimed the first FIA-recognised European Rallycross title with the car. For the 1977 ERC season, Wurz used an experimental 24-valve engine supplied by Mike Parkes, with a special crankshaft raising capacity to just under 3,000 cc. Bentza took the car over from Wurz in 1978 and won the GT Division title of the ERC. This was the only 3.0-litre Stratos in the world, and Bentza raced it until the end of 1983. He later sold it to Alexander Wurz, who had the car fully restored over nearly two years and revealed it to the public in May 2016 in its 1976 rallycross specification with Memphis livery.

The Stratos Zero concept that preceded the HF prototype was first shown at the Turin Motor Show in 1970. Designed by Marcello Gandini, it featured a 1.6 L Lancia Fulvia V4 engine, a wedge-shaped orange body measuring 3.58 m in length and 84 cm in height. It appeared in Michael Jackson's 1988 film Moonwalker and was sold at auction in Italy in 2011 for €761,600.

In 1978, Bertone designed the Lancia Sibilo, a concept car based on the Stratos with a wheelbase lengthened from 2,180 to 2,280 mm.

In 2000, Marcello Gandini designed the Stola S81, a modern interpretation of the Stratos built by Stola of Turin, debuting at the 2000 Turin Auto Show 30 years after the Stratos Zero. The concept was a two-seater coupé in a similar shade of orange to the 1971 prototype, sharing the wedge shape and wraparound windshield. It was initially a static model, later fitted with an electric motor in 2014; Gandini's own logo replaced the Lancia shield after Lancia asked not to be associated with the design.

At the 2005 Geneva Auto Show, British design firm Fenomenon exhibited a retro-modern Stratos concept, designed by Chris Hrabalek and developed by Prodrive, based on a mid-mounted 419 hp V8 engine.

The New Stratos, announced in 2010, was commissioned by Michael Stoschek (chairman of Brose Group) and his son Maximilian, and designed and developed by Pininfarina. It used a Ferrari 430 Scuderia as a donor car, with the chassis shortened by 200 mm and a 4.3 L V8 engine tuned to 540 hp at 8,200 rpm. Ferrari refused to allow production and forbade its suppliers from supporting the project. On 10 February 2018, Italian coachbuilder Manifattura Automobili Torino announced it would proceed with the originally planned 25-car production run.

This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.