Autobianchi: The Brand Fiat Used to Take Risks It Wouldn’t Sign Its Name To Almost nothing you drive today would exist in its current form without a company most Americans have never heard of. That’s not hyperbole and it isn’t nostalgia. If your car has its engine mounted sideways, driving the front wheels, with the … Read more
Fiat: 126 years to build an empire, five to dismantle it Every so often Top Gear used to do those hagiographies about brands that “shaped motoring”. They did Ferrari. They did Aston. They did Porsche. They never quite did Fiat properly, and if you think about it for more than thirty seconds, that omission is … Read more
Lancia Sibilo: Gandini’s last wedge, a Stratos in alien clothing Picture this. Turin Motor Show, April 1978. The car industry is five years deep into a hangover that just won’t lift. The 1973 oil crisis has rewired everything. Big cars don’t sell anymore. Safety regulations are forcing designers to bolt rubber bumpers onto everything like … Read more
Lancia Fulvia HF Coupé: the car that taught Lancia how to win championships Some cars win championships by brute force. They have more horsepower than their rivals, more displacement, more torque in the right places. They show up, run over everything, win. That’s one way to win. There’s another way. Cars that win by doing … Read more
Triflux: the Lancia engine with the strangest cylinder head ever bolted to a block Quick test. If I asked you to name the first car ever to use a properly sequential twin-turbocharger system — the kind where a small turbo spools up at low revs and a bigger one kicks in higher up — what … Read more
Lancia Megagamma: Lancia invented the modern MPV in 1978 and Fiat buried it Quick quiz. Without looking at Wikipedia. Who invented the modern MPV? The boxy family hauler with the flat floor, the five doors, the room for five people plus their luggage plus a bike inside? The category Top Gear used to mock relentlessly … Read more
Lancia ECV: the rally car that was built to embarrass the Delta S4 and never turned a wheel There’s a particular kind of automotive heartbreak that only true petrolheads understand. It’s not the car that died young in a famous crash. It’s not the one that lost the championship by half a point. It’s the … Read more
Lancia: the brand that invented half the modern car and ended up selling Ypsilons in Italy There’s a question Chris Harris has asked, more than once, on camera. It goes something like this: which manufacturer, when you really dig into the history books, turns out to have invented more of the modern car than any … Read more
