Lancia, one of the most famous and evocative of all the major automotive brand names, was founded exactly 100 years ago today. To celebrate this milestone Italiaspeed today starts an exclusive 15 part history of Lancia.

Every once in a while, a historical figure emerges, who is adjudged to have attained great stature in their chosen field. It is a select enough group, but it is rarer still that history judges them to have been somehow preordained to pursue a certain destiny in life. Be it in politics, the arts, science, or industry, these figures possess a combination of talent, determination, single-mindedness and leadership which suggests that they were placed on this earth purely to achieve greatness in the fields in which they excelled. In the formative years of the automobile industry, a number of such figures left their mark, many of their names still prominent on any suburban high street. Nevertheless, even in this company, the name of Vincenzo Lancia stands tall. An extraordinary man by any measure, his constant quest to think outside the box, and marry the orthodox with the radical, shaped the ethos of the company he formed on this day in 1906. Throughout the last hundred years, this philosophy has formed the groundwork for Lancia’s legendary reputation of innovation (underlined by hundreds of patents filed over the years), intertwined with luxury, style and excellent performance.

Born on August 24, 1881 in Fobello, Val Sesia, Italy, Vincenzo was the youngest of four children and the son of Cavalier Giuseppe Lancia. The family was quite well-to-do, with Vincenzo’s father having made his fortune in the preserved food industry. This allowed them to spend the summer in their villa in Fobello and the rest of the year in Turin, in a property they owned in corso Vittorio Emanuele. Cavalier Lancia had already mapped out the future for each of his four children: Giovanni, Arturo, Maria and Vincenzo, who was affectionately known as ‘Censin’. Vincenzo was earmarked to become a solicitor.

At school, however, ‘Censin’ proved to be a disaster. He was certainly bright enough, but he simply couldn’t apply himself in his studies. He was lazy and easily distracted, and eventually his father reluctantly gave up on the idea of making a lawyer of him. Instead, at the age of twelve, he was sent off to college in the hope that he would at least gain a diploma in accounting.

The young Vincenzo was distracted from his studies, however, by the workshop opened by the Ceirano brothers in the yard of the family home. They built and sold bicycles under the name of Welleyes, as English names had more clout with the public at the time. Censin was a regular visitor to the Ceirano workshop and before long he became a novice mechanic. When the two brothers eventually started work on their first automobiles, the young Vincenzo was fascinated by engines. He left school and succeeded in obtaining his father’s permission to go to work for the Ceirano workshop. He was taken on as an accountant (seemingly at the insistence of his father, who considered the position of accountant to be slightly less demeaning than that of mechanic), but instead of working on the company’s books, he busied himself repairing engines.

In 1899, having secured financial backing, the Ceirano brothers began producing a small car designed by the engineer Aristide Faccioli. The Welleyes automobile was a great success, but the Ceirano brothers simply couldn’t keep up with demand. In July of that year, they accepted Giovanni Agnelli’s offer, and for the sum of thirty thousand lire they sold their entire plant and the patents for the Welleyes car, which would soon be the basis for the Fiat 3.5 HP. Lancia, then 18 years old, was taken on by Fiat as a test driver, as was Felice Nazzaro, who had recently joined the company.

In its early years, Fiat took active part in competitions, with Lancia and Nazzaro behind the wheel. Nazzaro was a real ‘stylist’ when driving. Lancia, on the other hand, was impetuous, but also tended to be quicker, whenever he wasn’t hit by mechanical failure. It was in this role that he met and befriended Claudio Fogolin, who joined F.I.A.T. in 1904 as racing driver and engineer.

Lancia had carved out a promising impending career as one of the great racing drivers of his period with a number of impressive drives throughout 1905, with his dedication, talent and fantastic speed marking him out. However, in 1906, Vincenzo took the decision which would shape the rest of his life and automotive history. Following the Vanderbilt Cup in America in October of that year, Lancia returned to Italy and resigned his post as a racing driver for F.I.A.T., on the basis that he no longer saw his own future in motor racing. A few weeks later, on November 29, Lancia and Company Spa was incorporated, with Vincenzo and Fogolin holding equal stakes in the new enterprise. At the time, Lancia was 25 years old. Although he would continue his racing activities for a couple of years, he was entering a new phase in his life, one which would occupy him until his passing at the tragically young age of 56.

The venture, however, got off to an inauspicious start. The company’s original premises were a small factory rented from Matteo Ceirano, who had found the building too small for his expanding Itala company. Sadly for the partners, the building, along with its contents (including a prototype, patterns, drawings and tools) was destroyed in February 1907 by a fire, started when an oil lamp overturned. According to Nigel Trow in The Shield and Flag, it was, “one of the few times (Maria Lancia) had seen her brother in tears.”

If Vincenzo was deterred, however, it was only temporarily, as he started work on reconstruction only a couple of days later. After rebuilding the factory, it was decided to abandon the first prototype in favour of a new design, the Tipo 51 ‘18-24 h.p.’, which would retrospectively come to be known as the Alpha. Built along largely conventional lines, but executed with a deal of finesse, the Tipo 51 nonetheless incorporated a number of noteworthy technical advances. These included the forward positioning of the gearbox, mounted to the crankcase, at a time when most gearboxes were placed a significant distance from the engine. Careful attention to detail in considering load points, cross-members and the positioning of the engine and gearbox also allowed a very lightweight and stiff chassis compared with the opposition.

Mechanically, innovations included a 2543cc side-valve four-cylinder engine which was shaft-driven (rather than the usual chain) and revved to 1,450 rpm – very high by the standards of the day, when most other engines would struggle to reach 1,000 rpm. Later development, meanwhile, would eventually see the engine developing 28 hp at 1800 rpm. It also featured an unusual twin-jet carburettor designed by Fogolin, as well as a patented oil lubrication system penned by Lancia (via a rotating force-fed oil pump). These features would also be found on the 1908 Tipo 53 (Dialpha), which boasted a six-cylinder engine, obtained by adding two pots to the Alpha’s four-cylinder unit. One of the first six-cylinder cars to be produced, the Dialpha could hit 110 km/h, making it one of the best-performing cars of its day, but only 23 examples were produced.

Although a prototype was prepared as early as September 1907, a mere seven months after the factory fire, Lancia had waited a further four months, until the 1908 Turin Salon, to unveil the Alpha. By the time production stopped in the summer of 1909, 108 examples had been built. It was replaced by the Tipo 54 (Beta – although as with all Lancias up to the Kappa, this is a retrospective name, applied after 1919 when Lancia adopted the practice of naming its cars after Greek letters). In essence, the Beta was an extensive development of the Alpha, with a new monobloc engine design, displacing 3119cc, generating 34 hp at 1500 rpm. It lasted until 1910, by which time 150 cars were made. The Beta was, in turn, replaced by the 1910 Gamma, which represented another steady evolution. Capacity was increased once again, the existing engine being bored out to 3456cc, lifting power to 40 bhp, while short wheelbase cars with longer stroke (4712cc) engines were frequently used in various competition events.
 

Meanwhile, changes on the company side were afoot. The original factory on the Via Ormea was succumbing to spatial pressures, so in addition to enlarging it, the company had also built a second factory in the Corso Dante to produce the Gamma. However, even this proved inadequate, and so Lancia and Fogolin bought the redundant Fides Brasier plant on the Via Monginevro in the spring of 1910 and moved the original workshops in the Via Ormea there, with the first cars to emerge from the new factory the Delta and Epsilon in January 1911.  At the same time, Lancia took the decision to adopt a new logo. Prior to 1911, the marque’s cars had carried a simple brass plate with the legend ‘Lancia & C.’, but to celebrate the factory’s opening a new logo was designed by Lancia’s long-time friend Count Biscaretti di Ruffia.

The twelve months immediately following the opening of the new factory were busy, with three new models – the Gamma’s successor, the Tipo 56 (‘Delta’, plus a high performance version dubbed the Bidelta), a long wheelbase version known as the Tipo 58 (Epsilon), and a short-wheelbase variation, called the Tipo 60 (Eta). The chassis remained a carryover from the Gamma, itself fundamentally unchanged from the Beta, but the engine had been stroked to 4.1 litres (4080cc) for the Delta and Epsilon, with a further enlargement to 5 litres doing service in the Eta.

The following year, Lancia introduced the 15 h.p. (Zeta) – a car whose technical innovations are generally overlooked. It was powered by a new 2614cc four-cylinder engine, notable for its very short length. This characteristic was made possible by a new method of mounting the crankshaft, and whilst rated at 15 hp, the reality was in fact closer to 30 bhp at 1800 rpm. Technical highlights included a water-driven cooling fan, a special design of spring-mounted clutch, and a four-speed gearbox with duplex direct drive on the top two gears mounted at the rear, along with the differential. However, although in regular production for a number of years, sales were extremely poor, with only 34 examples sold.

It was left to the Tipo 61 of 1913, the ‘Theta’, to compensate for this failure, described by Trow as, “the definitive four-cylinder side-valve Lancia.” Using the 4942cc engine of the commercial/military 1Z, in this guise developing 70 bhp, the Theta had a similar chassis to the Delta. Innovations included a rake-adjustable steering wheel with three positions, while a full range of built-in electrical equipment, including full lighting, Rushmore dynamo, electric starter and horn was made available as standardised installation for the first time by a European manufacturer. Around 1700 units were built between 1913 and 1919, and it was also successful in export markets such as Britain and the United States.

In the meantime, Lancia had been making progress on a new generation of V engines. Prior to the outbreak of war, work had begun on an all-new 60° V8 engine, narrow compared with the more usual 90° for such a layout, and a patent was filed on this design just prior to Italy’s entry to the war in May 1915. However, it remained stillborn as all work was devoted to military purposes, with the Theta in particular finding a ready role as the basis for barrage-balloon carriers, staff cars, ambulances, gun tenders and even armoured cars. Other vehicles produced for the military included the aforementioned 1Z, Jota and Djota, all powered by the same 70 bhp, 4.9-litre four-cylinder engine found in the Theta. 

Instead, Lancia’s first V design was a huge 38-litre, 52° V12 designed for aircraft. Featuring overhead cams for the first time on a Lancia engine, this beast was rated at 580 bhp at 1600 rpm when it was built in 1917, with incremental improvements increasing this to 600 bhp at 1700 rpm by the following year. The engine did not go into production and was never used in action as by the time it was ready, the war had ended. Nevertheless, the experience, especially of the advantages of narrow-angle V engines, had deeply influenced Vincenzo. 

The result would be seen following the cessation of hostilities, when at the 1919 Paris Salon Lancia unveiled the 7.8-litre (7837cc) 150 h.p. V12, exceptional for its extremely narrow vee angle of 22°. Such was its compactness, in the words of one journalist, it looked, “like a six with dual ignition.” It was displayed in a bare chassis which also featured a novel design of rear suspension designed to give an equally good ride whether the car was loaded or empty, through a combination of cantilever and semi-elliptic springs. Lancia envisaged building 1500 or so examples at 50,000 lire apiece, but soon realised this to be over-ambitious and dropped the project.

Although somewhat overshadowed, Lancia also displayed the Theta’s replacement at the Paris show – a new 35 h.p., which came to be known as Kappa. In principle, this was still much the same as Lancia’s original 1907 model, but the design had been refined to keep pace with technical advancements, with Lancia now claiming a top speed of 125 km/h. In many ways very similar to the Theta, with carryover parts including the brakes, suspension, steering and electrical components, the main differences included larger tyres, a slightly longer wheelbase, a detachable cylinder head and a new Zenith carburettor, which replaced the previous Lancia design in use until that time. Despite its cost (some $6000 for a chassis in the United States), it was a commercial success both at home and in export markets, with around 1800 examples produced in a three-year production run. However, such traditional models were beginning to be left behind, and in 1921 Lancia introduced the Dikappa, a sports tourer version of the Kappa with an overhead valve version of the four-cylinder engine developing 87 hp, giving it 125 km/h capability. Dubbed the Tipo 64, the Dikappa shared the Kappa’s chassis, but with aluminium panels on the wooden frame. Around 160 units were produced in total until 1922.

A further development of the theme, the Trikappa, was launched in 1922. It was the fastest, most powerful Lancia produced so far and represented the culmination of conservative chassis for the company, but its real significance lay in its brand-new 4.9-litre V8 engine, six years in the making. The new motor was heavily based around the 50 hp V12, and was, in effect, this engine minus four cylinders, with a few other minor changes. Eventually, around 900 were built in a production run lasting between 1922 and 1925. Word got out, however, about a troublesome transmission brake, and sales dived, with some 300 examples standing idle at the company’s works at one point.

This represented a significant capital investment tied up which Lancia could not afford, and the immediate outlook at this stage was distinctly unpromising. Between the company’s founding and the years immediately following the First World War, Lancia’s production was thus primarily dedicated to fast middle-class tourers, with a somewhat conservative reputation, all of which in some way developed the principles first seen in the Alpha. In 1921, however, Lancia would reveal one of the most significant landmarks in the history of the automobile. Representing the culmination of a number of radical ideas in a single landmark technical achievement, it would make Lancia famous, assure the future of the company, and provide the basis of Vincenzo’s thinking for the rest of his life. It would be dubbed the Lambda.

by Shant Fabricatorian