Lancia - Lancia Stratos
The Lancia Stratos (correct name Lancia Stratos HF) was borne out a a project started by Bertone, who built a car around a Lancia Fulvia Coiupe with an idea to making a car to replace the ageing Fulvia Rally car. The bodywork was designed in house by Marcello Gandini who who took time off from working on the Lamborghini Countach project, and had previously been responsible for the Muira. Lancia were captivated and the prototype (which had been Fulvia and Beta engined) and the car was exhibited at the Turin show in 1970, while they got on to develop the finalised version of Lancia Stratos. The story goes that Bertone had designed the car with the Ferrari Dino engine in mind (as was used in the Fiat Dino), but Enzo objected on the grounds of there being a rival model competing in the market with the Dino. But when the Dino production started to wind down, a deal was finally struck. After all, Lancia had earlier given their competitive Grand Prix race team to Ferrari (along with designer Jano who was responsible for the Dino engine) when Lancia had pulled out of Grand Prix racing. . .
The new Lancia Stratos HF was first shown at the Turin show of 1971. Power output was 275bhp but later 24 valve cylinder heads enabled 320bhp, but since these were not production items they got banned for Rallying. The cars were rallied prodigiously in prototype Group 5 but for 1974 they had built the 500 cars needed to homologate the Lancia Stratos for Group 4, although there is strong speculation that by the end of production in 1975 not quite this many had been made . .
The Lancia Stratos cars won the the World Rally championship three times , the TdF 5 times, the Targa Florio and the list goes on.
The tyre size for the Lancia Stratos was originally 205/70VR14 to all 4 wheels, which had a rim width of 7.5 inches. Blockley manufactures the perfect 205/70VR14 tyre for the Stratos.
