Lancia

Lancia is an Italian automobile manufacturer founded in 1906 by Vincenzo Lancia and which became part of the Fiat group in 1969.

It was the first company to produce a V6 engine and a V4 engine. However, these engines had extremely narrow angulation of less than 30 degrees, instead of the ideal of 60 degrees for a V6 and 90 degrees for a V4 (or V8). This meant that the banks of cylinders overlapped at the end near the crankshaft.

During the 1980s, the company cooperated with Saab Automobile, with the Lancia Delta being sold as the Saab 600 in Sweden. The 1985 Lancia Thema also shared a platform with the Saab 9000, Fiat Croma and the Alfa Romeo 164.

One of the firm's trademarks is the use of letters of the Greek alphabet as the names of its models - other than "Alpha"; that's necessarily taken up by Alfa Romeo.

In the United Kingdom, Lancia increasingly suffered from image problems during the 1980s associated with rust (though in reality, the Lancia Beta truly deserved this reputation, due to Fiat's infamous utilization of inferior Russian steel), and pulled out of the UK market in 1994. Since then no right hand drive models have been produced.

In the United States, Lancias were sold from 1977 until 1984. It was withdrawn at the same time as Fiat. However, there is an American Lancia Club.

Lancia is famous for many innovations concerning the automobile sector. These include the first full-production V6 engine, in the 1950 Aurelia, and earlier experiments with V8 and V12 engine configurations.

Measured in WRC victories, Lancia is by far the most successful brand in rally cars.

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  Lancia Aurelia GT