Aurelia B12 Saloon for sale

[Kevin MacBride]

How's about this then !

[GG]

Definition of a real Lancia could be any of:

- designed under Vincenzo
- built with a narrow V motor (or any V motor)
- built with RHD, sliding pillar, etc.
- built under family ownership
- built pre-Fiat
- designed by engineers who were hired by family originally (De Virgilio, Zaccone Mina, until mid-70's)
- related to a rally winning car (Delta)
- built in Torino (last one was a Musa recently purchased)

Oh heck, embed with Lancia spirit?

[DavidLaver]

I struggle with right hand drive being particularly "Lancia" - for all I liked that 'my' B20 was RHD but with KM on the speedo.  When explaining I always assumed all 'better' Italian cars used for driving town to town were RHD. 

Not letting truth get in the way of a good story I also used to say that different towns went to LHD at different times while out in the country the default was RHD so you'd arrive not being sure which side of the road to keep to or at which point to swap.  The assumption also being that there were not all that many cars on the road.

Anyone know the facts as to how late ALL Lancias were RHD compared with others, relative proportion of other makes being RHD at that time, number of cars vs population in Italy compared with the UK?

David

[JohnMillham]

Anyone know the facts as to how late ALL Lancias were RHD compared with others, relative proportion of other makes being RHD at that time, number of cars vs population in Italy compared with the UK?

David

I imagine Lambdas were the first to be made with left hand drive and then only from the 8th. series. There are very few remaining - perhaps ten or so. They had to have a very "thin" steering box to avoid the mag/dynamo. See photo.
 Regards, John

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[ColinMarr]

There were lots of fanciful stories about why some Italian cars were predominantly RHD right into the 1950s. I thought I had put this to rest in an article I wrote for either Viva Lancia ! or the LMC Journal ages ago. An article that I now can’t locate! This was based on finding a reference in an AA or RAC guide to continental motoring published pre-war. This warned British drivers to beware that in some parts of Italy the rule of the road changed between town and country – they drove on the right in the country and the left in the towns.

The idea being that on narrow country and mountain roads it was an advantage for the driver to be close to the mountain-wall or the edge of the road to position the car more accurately, so that RHD when driving on the right was better. The reverse is true in towns or where more traffic is expected, there it is better for the driver to be positioned close to the centre of the road, so as to better judge the closeness of on coming cars – for a RHD drive car this means driving on the left.

It would seem that this practice continued in Italy longer than it did in other European countries before becoming unworkable as the number of vehicles on the road increased. The more conservative car manufacturers and those building cars for the highways rather than the towns seem to have stuck with RHD longer than others, and this included Bugatti, Maserati and Lancia – perhaps Lancia being the last to make the change in the mid 1950s. Whereas FIAT made the jump much earlier.

Colin

[Sliding Pillar]

This car is now SOLD