The Stratos importance in rallying Until Lancia invented the mid-engined Stratos in 1971,

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1 The Bertone Stratos prototype of 1970 was a running car, not merely a mock-up, and was powered by a midmounted Fulvia V4 engine. No trace of this car, except the excitement that it promised, would read across to the Stratos that followed. told me that he had not even heard of the Stratos concept car until he saw it on display: During 1970, Bertone had gone to considerable trouble to keep its programme secret, even arranging to buy up an engine/transmission assembly from a crashed car, so that the Lancia factory would have no advance knowledge of its intentions. As far as Fiorio was concerned, it was not only the style or the rearengine/rear-drive layout that set him thinking, it was also the use of Lancia underpinnings. Certainly, he told me, it became the inspiration which led to the birth of the real Stratos, a car which became the world s very first purposebuilt rally car. Even so, it s important to stress that the only connection between the original Bertone concept car and the Stratos which eventually went on sale was the name itself. Nothing else, not one nut, bolt or component, was shared or carried over. Even so, in November 1970 Lancia did not immediately call Bertone, nor set a production-stratos project in motion. It was not until well after the Brussels Motor Show of January 1971 (where, incidentally, Ford s new prototype midengine/rear-drive GT70 rally car made its first appearance) that Lancia asked to see it. The fact that Ford had shown the GT70, and seemed determined to turn it into a works rally car, definitely gave more impetus and urgency to the programme. According to Nuccio Bertone himself, the phone call came from Lancia s general manager, Pierugo Gobbato, and 12 it was Bertone, along with his PR manager Beppe Panicco, who drove the metallic silver projectile through the streets of Turin to Lancia s Via San Paolo premises. It was such a noisy machine that, almost before it had halted in front of the offices, Gobbato, Cesare Fiorio and the motorsport engineer Ing. Tonti had rushed out into the car park to see what all the commotion was about. Shortly afterwards, Gobbato listened carefully to what Fiorio had in mind, and gave approval for a new prototype car to be built-up. Still to be called Stratos, but this time to have a practical layout and conventional doors, a new project got under way in February/March Even so, it would be eleven months before the first car actually made its first run, and no less than 43 months before sporting homologation was achieved. Nor was it always certain, in that period, that the Stratos would ever go on sale: Lancia enthusiasts, however, bless the fates which eventually ensured that it did... The Stratos importance in rallying Until Lancia invented the mid-engined Stratos in 1971,

2 Bertone the body builders Like Fiat and Alfa Romeo, in the 1960s and 1970s, Lancia relied on Italy s thriving coachbuilding industry to supply bodyshells or complete monocoques for its more specialised, low-volume products. Companies like this had sprung up around the use of wooden body skeletons with hand-beaten skin panels, and a good deal of similar handwork was still involved in building hundreds, rather than tens of thousands, of cars. By this time, Bertone was working in steel, aluminium and glass-fibre, with much more press-tooling and simple jigging facilities than before. Even so, by being flexible and technically resourceful, the company remained financially independent of any of the car makers. Its boss, Nuccio Bertone, was renowned both for his business sense and his styling acumen. In 1970/71 Bertone s existing relationship with Lancia (which included building that fabulously impractical Fulvia-engined Stratos concept car of 1970) was one of several strong reasons for it to gain the contract to build all 500 (and more...) Stratos monocoques. With a modern factory at Grugliasco, in the suburbs of Turin, and with the very recent experience of styling, tooling and preparing to manufacture the little mid-engined Fiat X1/9, Bertone was ideally placed to carry out a short-term, limited-production job. For the Stratos, not only did Bertone press, weld and assemble the monocoques, but also painted and part-trimmed the shells before sending them to Lancia s Chivasso plant. This meant that the Stratos could be finally assembled in a corner of a modern factory which was otherwise more concerned with building up thousands of Fulvias and Flavias. Incidentally, when the Stratos contract was completed, Bertone did not find itself out of work, for its next homologation special job was to produce 400 two-door saloon bodyshells for the Fiat 131 Abarth. Not only did the 131 Abarth replace the Stratos on the line at Bertone, but, from 1977, it also began to replace it as a works rally car! cars which were committed to world-level rallying were compromised in one way or another. Either the engine was purpose-built but the structure was not, or an existing structure was heavily modified around an available engine. Lancia set out to change all that. Up to that time, no manufacturer had ever engineered a complete homologation special a brand-new car produced purely with rallying in mind. Earlier specials such as BMC s Mini Cooper S used a heavily-modified engine in an existing structure. Later, cars like Ford s Lotus-Cortina and the Escort Twin- Cam became special because an all-new engine was slotted into an existing, though modified structure. Two Italian cars, on the other hand the Lancia Fulvia HF and the Alfa Romeo Giulia GTA used lightly modified engines, but radically lightened structures. Although several competition managers realised that someone, somewhere, would have to take the next big step, none of them could convince their management to invest heavily in new models. The Ford GT70, which preceded the Stratos by a full year, was a case in point Ford had its dreams and knew what it wanted; the GT70 promised to fulfil those fantasies, but the economic calculations never stacked up. Someone, somewhere, had to be first, and it was Lancia that made the breakthrough. Realising that a wholehearted effort could do the trick, it set about producing a new car which could theoretically win any type of event Monte Carlo or Safari, Acropolis, 1000 Lakes or RAC. To do this, a purpose-built structure with almost infinitely adjustable suspension and settings was needed, and Lancia set out to provide exactly that. The true importance of the Stratos was that the dream 13

3 Three months after the Stratos had appeared on the Bertone stand at the Turin Show, Lancia had started testing with this, the only example. By early 1972, when this car was pictured, it had acquired correct tail lamps and the dirty wheels prove that some hard motoring had already been carried out. Perhaps the patrician Agnelli was having a bad hair day, for no more was ever heard of this dismissive remark, and Stratos work continued unhindered, though it must have alarmed Fiorio at the time. In 1972, therefore, not only did much work take place on the first two cars, but team superstar Sandro Munari won the Monte Carlo and Rally of Sicily events in Fulvia HF1600s, while Simo Lampinen and Amilcare Ballestrieri won major events in the same models. In the meantime, testing was not going as well as hoped, so Lancia took a bravery pill, eventually going out of its way to hire Mike Parkes as the Stratos principal development engineer. British-born Parkes, the son of Alvis long-serving 33

4 Rallying variety, in a sprint, on an ice-bound trotting track in Sweden with Waldegård s winning Stratos ahead of a works Lancia Beta Coupé, and two of the works front-wheel drive Saab V4s. three minutes from no fewer than three of the rival Fiats. Neutral observers were amused, though there was probably some consternation back at Fiat/Lancia HQ in Italy! A month later Björn Waldegård made his Stratos debut on the Swedish, in the car which Andruet had crashed on the Monte. Amazingly, there was so much snow on that event that the lack of power suffered by the nimble 1.8-litre Saab V4s did not show up, and they were equally competitive. Björn, let s be honest, was very lucky, for throughout the event he was quite outpaced by the flying Stig Blomqvist/ Saab V4 combination except on one stage (the icecovered trotting track at Karlstad), where the Saab s engine died with electrical failure. The maximum penalty which Stig incurred was enough to drop him behind the Stratos, which eventually won by just 1min 47sec. The deadly rival Fiat 124 Abarths, by the way, were totally outpaced. 65

5 Portugal 1976, with Raffaele Pinto pressing on in the well-used TOL64137 (which was already two years old). Although fitted with a 24-valve engine, his Stratos could only manage fourth place. 79