An email the other day from a friend mentioned going to Monterey with an “alpha-male” as company. Made me start to think – why did he mention that? Are\u00a0Lancista different than other normal alpha-male-car-guys?<\/p>\n
I’ve been giving a few talks recently about Lancia to a broad set of audiences. Some of these are\u00a0cultural groups, heck, even a local Porsche club.\u00a0People are interested about Lancia but want to know what this company was about. Its not easy to explain why we cherish these cars after so many years. The question is not easy to answer. Its actually rather perplexing.<\/p>\n
Lancia (say up until 1990) doesn’t fit the norm\u00a0for\u00a0car companies. Yes, they were engineering focused, fully vertically integrated, but so were other companies. They were innovative\u2026 that’s important, but not enough to explain our fascination. They focused on\u00a0well-developed chassis, far ahead of other companies. OK\u2026.that sets the stage, but these observations don’t complete the story. They\u00a0doesn’t answer why we remain so\u00a0passionate about these cars, or the joy we get from driving them.<\/p>\n
The racing careers of the Aurelias, the D cars, the Fulvia and the effervescent rise of the later Lancias (Stratos, Integrale, etc.) all give a sense of the “little one that could”, and that is the heritage of the “thinking underdog” that the company represents. Is that enough?<\/p>\n
There is the subtle and lovely pleasure of driving a Lancia, be it a Lambda, Aprilia, Aurelia, Appia, as well as\u00a0later Flaminia, Fulvia, and Flavias. Its a\u00a0pleasure that is hard to define, but could be described as the joy of balanced controls, enjoyment of torque over power, a suspension that informs but leaves you riding in comfort. Its relaxed driving instead of boy-racer. Its the joy of everything being thought-through and well considered. Its delight in\u00a0the care \u00a0taken in the design and making of the car. These pleasures seem central to the Lancia experience. One can understand how hard they must be for today’s marketing folks to appreciate.<\/p>\n
Recently a non-Lancia friend and I took a Flavia 2000 coupe for a drive. He immediately remarked on the\u00a0delicacy of its detailing. He saw softness, something he said was\u00a0no longer in\u00a0cars. That was an interesting observation, and I wondered if it synched with my sense perhaps\u00a0Lancia was more sensitive to more feminine\u00a0aspects\u00a0of design than the masculine. Not sure what that means, but its a first thought. A brief look at the Fulvia adverts in the 1960s, so many of them featuring well-dressed women enjoying the car, suggests there may be something to this.\u00a0Might Lancia have been an early\u00a0company in their marketing cars for the emerging women drivers in the 1960s? Possibly so.<\/p>\n
What about those alpha males? Lancias were\u00a0for designers, engineers, professionals, lawyers, women\u2026. doesn’t seem like an alpha group, does it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An email the other day from a friend mentioned going to Monterey with an “alpha-male” as company. Made me start to think – why did he mention that? Are\u00a0Lancista different than other normal alpha-male-car-guys? I’ve been giving a few talks recently about Lancia to a broad set of audiences. Some of these are\u00a0cultural groups, heck, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.lanciainfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.lanciainfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.lanciainfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.lanciainfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.lanciainfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2370"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/blog.lanciainfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2376,"href":"http:\/\/blog.lanciainfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370\/revisions\/2376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.lanciainfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.lanciainfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.lanciainfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}