“1906 – 2006: Once upon a time…”. This is the title of the calendar with which Lancia starts the celebrations for its centenary year. Created by the Armando Testa agency and the work of Fulvio Bonavia, one of the best-known Italian photographers, and winner of several major international competitions, the calendar presents one hundred years of automotive creations from Lancia, combining them with “fairy-tale inventions”.

The result is an extraordinary gallery of pictures in which the seductive Beta Torpedo challenges the beauty of Snow White, the Aurelia GT tells the story of Cinderella’s dream, the Aurelia Spider dispatches Little Red Riding Hood’s wolf, and the Fulvia flies with Hook and Peter Pan. Then there is the Delta Rally that receives the kiss of victory like the Frog Prince, and the Ypsilon enters the realm of Alice and her Wonderland. On every page the magical styling of the Lancia cars combines with the fairy-tale characters and atmosphere, and the enchanted landscapes of the poetical narrative is interwoven with a legendary history of cars and designers, races and engines that have been milestones in the technical progress and racing events of the twentieth century.

It was 1906 when Vincenzo Lancia wrote the first page of the amazing adventure that would involve thousands of people over the years – technicians, workers, managers – in the plants, offices and the racing world. And with them, the many Lancia customers: passionate, demanding, in love with beauty, but also well informed about the most sophisticated technologies. Here we find the roots of the inimitable personality that enables us to immediately distinguish a Lancia car from all the others on the road.
 

Today, the fantasy world of the fairy-tale and the real world of Lancia meet in Fulvio Bonavia’s photographs, which highlight, with great artistic sensitivity, the ways that both have been able to bring to life the dreams of whole generations.