LanciaInfo Blog

This upcoming weekend, an Aurelia will be up at Elkhart Lake at the Vintage Races. Family is coming too.

Then in early october, several Appias are coming from the west coast, across the country on Route 6. I hope to join up with them in Chicago and take the B20 east to the Lancia Club’s east coast reunion in Wellsville, PA, Oct 3-4. Tony Nicosia is planning to fly out and drive with me. Should be a good, but long road trip.

for more, larger photos).

The Gooding auction on Saturday night was rather a hoot – seeing a Bugatti sell for over $7 million was a bit strange.

Much preferred was the natural landscape of Point Lobos, just south of the car action. This state park is home to Cypress Groves, and wonderful stony beaches, where Edward Weston and Ansel Adams cut their teeth. Regardless of the fantastic automobiles (and there were a lot of these), Mother Nature at her best is still impressive.

There is rich history in Detroit. There is Ford’s original Model A plant (from 1904, now a small private museum), Ford’s Highland Park plant c. 1920, where the Model T was made in volume, and assembly line first implemented, now used as a corporate paper depository.

Also seen were the abandoned Packard plant, River Rouge, and notable stunning corporate buildings – the Fisher, Albert Kahn, and GM.

There are some significantly beautiful houses in the inner city of Detroit as well – including a FL Wright block house from the 1950’s. Also, just north of Detroit is Cranbrook, with its amazing Saarinen designed grounds, and a world-caliper  art school. A prototype house on display had off-the shelf parts and some custom CCN milled bits to make special moments. 

From top and down: Ford’s first plant for the model A, his office on the shop floor, and production floor.

Above, the Highland Park Factory for the model T.

Top right – new prototype house at Cranbrook.

Above and below, abandoned massive Packard plant.

Ford’s Highland Park factory, now a paper depository.

In the midwest, the concours of the year is Meadowbrook in Detroit,  a well established concours, with many cars from the 1930’s,a more relaxed event than Pebble Beach.

As cars are to be used, the B20 was driven up the 300 miles to the Concours, with only a small detour to weld up an exhaust break. Highlight of the trip was 100 miles on a lovely two lane country road through Michigan farms. 

The concours was filled with many 1930’s cars – Packards, Duesenbergs, Bentleys. European cars are less prominent here, but there were two classes of Ferrraris, and two European classes. The B20 was with Sports Cars to 1955 with a Bugatti  35, Jaguar 120 alloy, a 1921 Vauxhall from 1921 (same owner for 50 years, it was his first car!), a 1951 Porsche, and a Jag SS 100. Not much chance for the B20 altho the judges liked it. Not too sure anyone else drove their cars – the Porsche had less than 2 miles on it from the year before.

The other class of European sports cars after 1956 included a lovely Bizzarini and Bruce Male’s freshly restored Maserati Zagato.

The ride home at night was a delight – again, that country road, with the soft glow of the B20 instruments and cool summer night air – wonderful. Cruised home between 70-80 most all the way, intoxicating to be sure. A drive to be remembered. 

Sam and Emily Mann’s Duesenberg with custom body for Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. Imposing to be sure.

Above – the Marmon Meteor and another Duesenbergs, Dodge estate.

Below – two Ferraris, and Bizzarini, with Maserati Zagato.

The major differences are two –

A comparison of two Lancia chassis drawings for the B20 allows an appraisal of the differences between series. Here, a s.4 body (in red) is compared to a s. 1 body (in black).

B20 bodies

B20 bodies – s.1 compared to s.4

in the rear deck lid and trunk area  – the s. 4 has a revised gas tank, a longer flatter trunk floor, and a longer rear end.

in the overall cockpit area – the s. 4 is lower, the windscreen is more laid back, and the windows are located  differently.

The factory drawings were found as xeroxed copies on Ebay some time ago. They are dated 1951 and 1954, and show major chassis dimensions, location of major assemblies and control points. The s. 4 drawing is very similar to the s. 1 drawing (probably traced over it), so they can be laid over each other to see variations. They were probably used as a check for chassis fabrication or as a coordination drawing with Pininfarina.

The section comparison shown here has been cleaned up, with only some lines removed.

June 15, 2008

above – title blocks for the two drawings.

below – the differences in the trunk area.

The s.4  has a larger trunk, and revised gas tank.

left – roof line and windows

bottom – overlaid plans.

Note exhausts, and the s. 4 has a longer rear.

above – a comparison of elevations (cleaned up)

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The D50, Lancia’s Formula One car of the mid-1950’s, was much admired at the time. It had a mixed career – great  promise, some successes, some failures. Given over to Ferrari in 1955, it was then modified and turned into a championship car over the next two seasons.

Most of our information comes from the Lancia histories (Trow and de Weerninck) or from Chris Nixon’s recent book, “Rivals….” on the D50 and Mercedes W196.

back to the original design of the car. He concludes that it is impressive an F1 car first designed in 1953 is still relevant in 1957.

If you want to read it, please let me know and I’ll send you a scan.

Living with a new car

Some have asked about how the early B20 compares to the later ones – an informal  Road test is on the web site.

Over the past month or so, the car has been growing as a steady friend – in general it is a delight. Now the goal is finding time to drive the car, and how to find more hills.

Sorting of the front end seems to have worked – its much quieter. Exhaust leaks fixed, cables realigned, and bits of weatherstripping attached.

The 5/50/500 mile rule applies: first go 5 miles, and if all is OK, 50 miles, then 500. After 50 miles mark, there was an awful screech from the engine bay. After getting the car on  a lift, the answer was that a small screw had fallen behind the flywheel and was rubbing against the rear aluminum  cover. Removed, problem solved.  Also tightened up loose bits – steering linkage, a couple of bolts rubbing on hoses, etc. 

A few more hundred miles, and then back to Gianni’s shop for another check – oil change, retorque heads, look over the car carefully. Checked radiator water temperature (155 deg f), the temperature of each cylinder (within 5 deg of each other, good!), retorqued heads, reset valves.

One of the valve springs was found broken. Thank goodness for the “two spring” design in the Lancia head, otherwise it would have been very serious. As it was, no disaster – changed it.

The bottom line: check and recheck. Another 500 miles, and it will be time for another look at the springs. Its bedding in quite nicely, tho.

Its done – taken out for a drive, picked up and brought home. A bit surreal, to be sure.

The people in the shots are Fuji (who works at Skips and did all the body work there), Skip McCabe, George (who hauled the car up back and forth from Skip to Scotty) and my friend Jack. All are good friends with Scott, who did the lions share of the work on the car (and who is in Indiana about 100 miles away). Of course, major thanks are due to him – as he was the guru and shepherd for the entire project.

Also thanks are due to Bob Williams of Will’s Garage in Pittsburgh (who kindly rebuilt the complex sliding pillar suspension), and to Walt Spak (Pittsburgh) who provided endless assistance and advise. Tony Nicosia in Costa Mesa did a fine job with the brakes.

The now-pretty car just gets better and better with more time on it. It definitely likes to warm up, for a while. Most everything else is working just fine. Speedo, tach, throttle, brakes – all is in pretty good fettle. There will of course be the odd bits to work out – speedo cable is a bit fussy, and the front suspension is not quite right yet.

But the car came home with little fuss. Its satisfying to drive – but very different from the later cars. The gearing is of course Lancia’s strongest suit – you can almost take off in 2nd, and while third doesn’t quite stretch as far as in the later cars, its all wonderfully matched together. The smaller motor works very nicely, pulls from down low and revs very freely. It doesn’t have as much in the seat of the pants “grunt” as the later cars – but this one  “squirts” between corners. More fluid perhaps.

The other pleasure is the view out of the car. The car lives up to its brochure – the panorama is wonderful. There seems to have a larger viewing area, possibly due to its different windshield mounting. Airy.

Its been a long journey to get this done. Pretty much finished now. Finally. Now the driving can start.

That big grin is what you have when you take the car out for its first drive…..in 45 years. Yesterday, the car was at the body shop of Skip McCabe, finally having left the mechanic’s. Skip and I took it out for a brief spin – a road off the main street by the shop has about a one mile length, and back and forth we went.

The car ran very well, surprisingly so. The upholstery wasn’t fully in, the door panels were off, and there were the odd bits, but nothing blew up, no smoke, no flames, and it ran.

There are still things to do, as the loose bits still need to be wrapped up. But it is closer now, and really a car. A couple of weeks from now, and then another spin. Its part of the “first 5 miles, then 50, then 500 miles” routine of breaking a car in reasonably. Skip knows this stretch of road very well – his shop restored an Alfa TZ and did 100 miles just back and forth on this little strip of road.

There was the chance to get some modest, and very preliminary impressions of the 2 liter motor and the s. 2 car. It probably never got over 50 mph, but even with a bit of trailing throttle, once the rear came a bit loose. Good fun.

The lack of weight in the car is noticeable – it just feels more fluid, and less heft to change direction. Finally the 2 liter motor is just a marvel. It revs like a top, very freely, and it even pulled from 1000 RPM in second gear without fuss. It has that magical Lancia quality which is most obvious in Fulvias – pulls down low, and revs freely up high. its not supposed to be able to do that, but it does.  The car has a silkiness on the road. The regular daily stuff of use – door latches, windshield wipers, etc. are all much much better on the later series of B20’s, but the silkiness and smoothness of this engine is pretty special.

This is going to be fun. Big grins, and lots of them.

The little bits

The good news is that things are back on track, moving ahead. Scotty is able to spend some time on the car, and he’s focused on just resolving little things and getting the car ready to go back to the body shop for final trimming and installation of the interior.

The driveshaft is in, the gearbox works, the motor is getting more running time (up to about 3 hours now). The noise in the water pump has gone away, the driveshaft seems to have a small vibration at 2200 RPM, but without an interior, this might just be some amplified resonance.

The fuel pressure is now at 5 psi, the carbs are functioning better, and the engine is bedding in well. There are still things to do – bits here and there, but its looking good.

We’ve agreed not to have a specific date yet on “back to body shop”, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Its now that all the mechanical assemblies are in and working, but need to be “fettled”. Time well spent here will pay big rewards later. Time for patience.

On another note, a very early Aurelia parts book for the B10 has surfaced. Typically, the first parts book for Aurelias was published in 1951, but this “Distinta provvisorio” is from September, 1950, and was one of 200. It has no illustrations, and doesn’t have the pages on the carburetor. It says “…manca la tavola n. 13 del carburetore non ancora pronta”.

One thing learned is that parts on each page (tav) are listed  surprisingly alphabetically. So part no. 1 always starts with an A, etc. After years of looking at parts books, this was  never noticed. Funny how you learn.