If you’ve never seen a Lancia Stratos in person, you owe it to yourself to seek one out. The Stratos is one of those cars that must be experienced in person to fully understand its design audacity, stance, and visceral presence. Initially conceived as a concept car of dramatic proportions, Marcello Gandini penned the Stratos Zero as a concept to lure Lancia away from Pininfarina to the services of Bertone.
The Stratos Zero, itself worthy of its own article, was the ultimate expression of the folded paper era. Impossibly low with a driver’s seat that elevated upward upon opening the rearward hinged single door entry, the Lancia Stratos borrowed visual cues from the Zero but ultimately would become its own signature design statement dominating rally racing with a world championship title not once, nor twice, but three times. Although Lancia engines were initially considered,the Stratos was eventually outfitted with the Ferrari Dino V6 engine, managed finally through a challenging relationship with Enzo Ferrari. The Stratos’ mid-engine configuration borrowed heavily from Gandinis earlier Miura using front and rear clamshell access and hockey stick doors. But any similarities to the elegant and sinewy Miuraend abruptly when examining the final Stratos design.
With numerous rally victories and a striking design, it’s surprising to find that fewer than 500 Stratoses were constructed in period. But this aspect only further contributes to the mysterious qualities of the Stratos. Lightweight fiberglass body panels paired with a steel monocoque center section and floorplan, a dramatic forward swept windshield, race-inspired and purposeful interior, and highly favorable power-to-weight ratio certainly combined to create a dramatic package but, in the end, it would be the unstoppably arresting body design that would capture the attention of admirers, delivering a visual impact that continues to shock enthusiasts and collectors today.
To understand the Stratos design, the first and most compelling feature to consider is the overall dimensions. A mere 141 inches in length, the Stratos sits on an 86-inch wheelbase. By comparison, a 1966 Mini Cooper is only 6” shorter wheel to wheel and just 20” shorter in length. The Stratos is designed with forward sweeping impressively curved windscreen perched atop a tall, shouldered wedge shape. In side view, the Stratos’ thin A-pillar angles back into narrow side glass which sweeps upward into the tightly truncated rear roof design. Compared with the Fiat X 1/9, a contemporary mid-engine design also penned by Bertone from the same folded paper wedge era, the windshield sweeps far forward into the front wheel arch while the X 1/9 stands upright with formality.
The peak point of the Stratos is also curiously at the windshield header, giving the car a very triangulated forward vault, accentuated by the short wheelbase. Further dramatic proportions can be seen in the Stratos with the position of the forward door cut, positioned within an inch of the rearward portion of the front wheel arch, whereas the Fiat X 1/9 displays more typical spacing in the same area. The Stratos perches the front wheel flares tall on the fender, above the lowest point on the hood, literally spilling over the hood line. The resulting wheel arches deliver a design element that was, surprisingly, originally featured on the Fiat concept car that spawned the X 1/9.
Dramatic from any view, the Stratos is powerful and commanding, perched on large wheels and tall tires, the stance gives the car a taut pitbullish presence with most of the visual energy spooled up into the wrap-around windscreen and small side windows. Even the body line crease that normally would divide the side view evenly creases the body above the top of the wheel rim edge and rolls the lower body panels deeply into the rocker panels. The front of the car drops the wide rectangular grille under the body crease flanked by accessory lights and pop-up headlamps.
In rear view, the combination of Miura and X1/9 becomes even more evident as features reveal a muscular X 1/9 body that appears to have visited the gym in preparation for a role in a superhero movie. Broad haunches, wide stance, and an angular roofline, the airfoil over the midsection of the design accentuates the dramatically reduced upper, a feature that must wreak havoc on rearward visibility. Finally, the rear panel treatment and rear fender flanks bear more than a subtle relationship to the earliest iterations of what would become Gandinis folded paper production masterpiece, the Lamborghini Countach.
No stranger to innovation, Lancia had been leaders in engineering and vehicle designs but the Stratos was a very big risk as well as a challenge to the sports car market. Lancia had innovated the use of V6 engines in the 1950s, so the mid-engine package was the perfect alignment for the future of Lancia performance cars. However, as times changed, by 1975 the automobile industry had felt the deep rumbles of government safety requirements, radically shifting fuel prices, and the need for more fuel-efficient cars. The Stratos, like so many conceptually innovative designs from the late 60s and early 70s, had become a quickly dated artifact of a bygone era. Though packaging priorities were changing in the industry, folded paper designs remained a big part of the 1970s and into the early 1980s. The Stratos left a big impression on the final series of performance sports cars with a signature body design that continues to impress more than half a century after it first captured the hearts of enthusiasts and three world rally championships.
