Page 13 - Lancia Stratos Zero Sample pages

The Making of the Lancia Stratos hf Zero
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A lovely set of illustrations that show both the location of the Lancia logo, which also doubled as a “button” for the windscreen to open up,
and the swiveling steering wheel, which moved in “tandem” with the windscreen. ARCHIVIO CENTRALE DELLO STATO/STILE BERTONE
rather underwhelming. A more interesting concept, the
Bizzarrini Manta, was showcased by Italdesign, a new
design studio created by erstwhile Bertone designer
Giorgetto Giugiaro. A true wedge, it was striking at some
angles, but overall, a little too fat and flat at the rear.
Score 2:0 in favor of Bertone vis-à-vis Pininfarina and
new-kid-on-the-block Italdesign.
In 1969, Italdesign’s take on an Alfa 33 foundation was
the Iguana: nice, but no cigar. Bertone’s riposte was the
Autobianchi Runabout—sweet, cute, funky, but not jaw-
dropping. Pininfarina’s Ferrari 512 S Berlinetta, now, that
was something. A design that managed to be wedgy yet
retain the Pininfarina house style for flowing undulating
lines. Moreover, it was incredibly low, under a meter high,
at 0.98, beating the Carabo’s 0.99!
A Pininfarina 1:0?
By 1970, the gloves were off. The first salvo was fired by
Pininfarina, with the Ferrari 512 S Modulo at the Geneva
Motor Show in March. An astounding flying saucer, it was
arguably Paolo Martin’s finest concept car design and
one of Pininfarina’s most distinctive. Barely 0.935 meters
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make everything new; the platform, chassis, suspension,
steering wheel, driving ergonomics and the cooling of
this engine which was designed to be at the front, but
was in a mid-position. Gandini in many ways was like
Leonardo da Vinci. The most difficult problem was an
exciting challenge for him to do something new.”
Of course, Marcello Gandini did not make the prototype
single-handedly.
“Fausto Boscariol and myself were entrusted with the
project,” remembers Eugenio Pagliano, who had joined
Bertone in 1968 and had been assisting Gandini with
the interiors of the cars. “There was no division of tasks,
everything had to be taken care of, with the help of a few
technical designers like Venanzio Di Biase.”
high, the car was sleek, sweeping, and innovative in its
details and technical solutions, such as the sliding canopy
and the enclosed wheels, and impressed all by the purity
of its lines.
“Bertone needed something more amazing, more
extreme,” explained Marcello Gandini to the author in
2015, and the designer had some ideas that he wanted
to try out.
As Gian Beppe Panicco mentioned to this author recently:
“Even if Gandini went with the Fulvia 1.6 HF, he had to
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In the mid-engine designs that Gandini had been working
on, the height of the engine, to some extent, dictated
the overall height of the car, as it was necessary for
the roof to be placed higher than the engine cover, so
that some rearward vision was possible. For a concept,
such practicality was not a necessity, and Gandini saw
an opportunity to rethink traditional design constraints.
Also, the Lancia’s V4 was conveniently lower.
Formula One had proven that it was possible to pilot a
car properly even if the driver was in a reclining position,
so Gandini used the driver’s almost supine driving
configuration as the starting point. In Formula One, the
driver sat at the center with the legs stretched out at the
front, between the front wheels, allowing for a very short
wheelbase and a compact car—so why not look at that
possibility too?
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