The eight best Lancia concept cars

1952 Lancia PF200

It wasn’t just the celebrated American designers like Harley Earl and Virgil Exner who explored jet-age themes in their designs, the European styling houses wanted in on the movement as well. Lancia produced a limited number of chassis from its ground-breaking Aurelia for coachbuilders to create one-off and limited edition designs and the PF200 was created atop one of these B52 platforms.

The open topped PF200 was unmistakeably a paean to the dawn of the jet engine in the year in which the first jet airliner, the De Havilland Comet, entered service. Debuting at the 1952 Turin Motor Show the PF200 had large, protruding circular air intake like that of an F-86 Sabre fighter jet, sweeping pontoon fenders, smoothly curved sides and tailfins flanking gun muzzle-like exhausts – six of them.

1955 Nardi Raggio Azzurro I

Moving from the jet age to the space race was this commission from former Lancia engineer and racing driver Enrico Nardi, albeit preceding the launch of Sputnik by a couple of years. The Azzurro, or ‘Blue Ray’, was another Aurelia-based creation built by Vignale and intended to showcase the products of Nardi’s new prototype and tuning equipment business.

A Nardi-designed tubular steel chassis underpinned the alloy panels while the Aurelias’s V6 benefitted from Mardi camshaft, pistons, manifolds and intake for a significant bump in power. The swooping, two-tone bodywork with its grille-mounted headlights, prominent scoops and fins would be eye-catching on its own but the blue Perspex canopy atop it elevates it to stratospheric levels. With an integrated fresh air scoop the canopy also included side windows which opened upwards towards the centre of the roof.

1960 Lancia Flaminia Loraymo

Yes, it is true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and yes, there are elements of the Loraymo that are undoubtedly visually pleasing but the overall result, particularly at the front is one of goofiness rather than gorgeousness. So why does it make our list? Because of the person who penned it, legendary American industrial designer Raymond Loewy. Famous for his designs for everything from the TWA logo to the Greyhound bus, Air Force One Livery and Skylab space station interior, Loewy did also have form with cars. Not only did Loewy design a logo for Studebaker, he also created the American firm’s famous Starliner and Starlight coupes.

Loewy was a student of streamlining and the Loraymo, based on the Lancia Flaminia Coupe, explored that theme with an extended nose whose chrome frame doubles as a bumper, foglights mounted on aerodynamic fins, wraparound rear screen with a roof-mounted spoiler above it and flush rear lights. Loewy was pleased enough with the result to display it at the 1960 Paris Motor Show and dub it with a moniker made up of letters from his own name.

1970 Lancia Fulvia HF Competizione

According to legend the Tom Tjaarda-designed Competizione was created at the behest of Alejandro De Tomaso as a honey trap to entice Ford to buy Lancia in the late 1960s. De Tomaso was hoping that by positioning Lancia as a potential future Ferrari rival, Ford CEO Lee Iacocca would purchase the company and install him at the top. History clearly records otherwise but Tjaarda named the car as one of his best when reunited with it a few years ago.

Built on a Fulvia chassis the Competizione focused on lightweight and aerodynamics to create a car with GT credentials that could also tackle a track. The Fulvia’s V4 was mounted 30mm lower for a sleeker bonnet line incorporating retractable headlights, while the rear wing was deployable and adjustable by the driver. An internal rollcage, rear wishbones in place of the solid axle, aluminium fuel tank and even thinner windscreen glass burnished its supposed race credentials enough that the concept was later evaluated as a potential Le Mans entrant.

1970 Lancia Stratos Zero

A product of what we’ve just now decided to call the ‘Wedge Wars’ of the 1970s between Bertone and Pininfarina – with some side skirmishes fought by Italdesign, this period gave us the Lamborghini Marzal, Alfa Romeo Carabo, Bizzarinni Manta and the extreme Ferrari Modulo. The latter, at just 93.5cm tall must have seemed the limit of the design trend when it appeared at the 1970 Geneva Motor Show. That was until the Turin Motor Show of the same year when the 84cm tall Zero made its debut.

Based on existing Lancia Fulvia mechanicals, at least in part because Bertone was touting for work from Lancia, the Zero was the work of Marcello Gandini and with barely any concessions to practicality was the zenith of car design as architecture. Ten tiny bulbs made up the headlights while the tail was illuminated by 84 lamps around its perimeter. Occupants entered through a flip-up windscreen, the green Perspex instrument panel was offset to one side and the minimal side windows retracted into the rear bodywork. Legend has it that when Bertone took the car to the Lancia factory to present it to the board he simply drove under the entry barrier.

1980 Lancia Medusa

Car designers changed tack at the end of the 1970s after repeated oil shocks, and there began a drive towards showcasing their aerodynamic expertise not to create wild wedges but sensible saloons. Italdesign’s entry into the efficiency pantheon was built with the express of creating the most aerodynamic car in the world.

So it took as its basis the Lancia Monte Carlo whose mid-engined configuration would allow for a very low and smooth bonnet line for a four door saloon. Those doors themselves were not gullwings as their shape suggests but wrapped into the roof for a cleaner shape. Streamlined door handles, a single, small side mirror and small side window openings gave it a drag coefficient of 0.263Cx and achieving Italdesign’s aims.

1982 Lancia Gamma Olgiata

Taking a saloon and creating a coupe version is the regular way of things and exactly what Lancia did with its 1978 Gamma, the marque’s first entry into the prestige end of the four-door market since the Flaminia. Despite its fastback styling the four-door was a conventional saloon and not a stand-out despite its quirky all-aluminium flat-four engine. The coupe, also the work of Pininfarina, was a different matter and a very handsome proposition.

So Pininfarina decided to revisit its two-door design in several guises over the following few years. First came a Gamma Spider with a targa roof that was a good match for its steeply raked C-pillar. The Scala of 1980 took the two-door’s styling in its entirety, stretching it and adding a pair of rear doors for an end result that was undeniably more handsome than the production saloon. Our favourite though is probably the Olgiata, a shooting brake based on the coupe and definitely high on the list of ‘if only’ when it comes to cars that never made production.

2003 Lancia Fulvia Coupe Concept

It is fair to say that number of Lancia fans got very excited when the Fulvia Concept appeared at the 2003 Frankfurt Motor Show. Especially given that the car was the work of the in-house Lancia Centro Stile team, and appeared on the marque’s show stand looking pretty much production ready. True, this was the era of car companies raiding their back catalogues and reinventing some classic designs with often mixed results. But the Fulvia looked good, inside as well as out thanks to a wooden dashboard that aped the original.

A two-seat coupe it sat on a Punto front-wheel drive platform with a 1.8-litre 140PS (103kW) inline-four that, thanks to a kerb weight of under a tonne, could send it to 62mph in a bit over eight and a half seconds and on to 132mph. Sadly Fiat’s finances at the time precluded a precluded a production model although five years later there were rumours that it might make a comeback on an Alfa Romeo Mito platform.

PF200, Fulvia HF Competizione and Stratos Zero images by RM Sothebys, Nardi Raggio Azzurro I image by Kobak.