Lancia is celebrating its 100 anniversary and to mark this extraordinary milestone, it is proud to present the Lancia Tour Italian Design, an exploration of design symbols and objects. All strictly made in Italy.

A century of elegance and appeal. A century of style and glamour that has accompanied the lives of Italians with Lancia cars, producing an unquestioned tribute to Italian workmanship. To celebrate this historic moment, Lancia presents the Lancia Tour Italian Design, an itinerant exhibition that makes its debut in the spectacular setting of the Arch of Peace in Milan, during the Furniture Fair, before visiting other European cities such as Paris, Madrid, Barcelona and Venice. The exhibition draws on a spectacular itinerary created by Davide Rampello, Chairman of the Milan Triennial, and curated by Luca Molinari, Director of the NABA School of Design of Milan, to illustrate the world of Lancia values, by displaying cars that have set their imprint on their age, alongside the shapes and objects that have made Italian design history.

“The exhibition focuses on the link between the memory of a glorious past and plans for an equally great future”, said Davide Rampello, Chairman of the Milan Triennial. “The project also highlights Italian excellence and focuses attention on the cultural system of a country which has founded its international credibility on the culture of the beautiful and the efficient.”

The Lancia cars on display represent 100 years of Italian history: from the Lambda Torpedo (1925), and other historical cars like the Aurelia B24 Spider (1955), the Flaminia Coupé (1965), and the Fulvia Coupé (1967), down to the recent past, with the legendary Delta HF 4WD (1989), and the present, with the Lancia Ypsilon MOMO Design. Each of these cars has left an indelible mark on the concept of Italian styling, like some of the design objects associated with them. It is a continuous interplay between past and present, shapes and impressions. So visitors will be able to admire evocative combinations of the Lambda Torpedo with the Perpetual Calendar by Enzo Mari of 1959, the Aurelia B24 Spider with Sgarsul by Gae Aulenti of 1961, the Flaminia Coupé and the Cupola by Aldo Rossi of 1988, the Delta HF 4WD with the Cube by Bruno Munari of 1957, to mention just a few examples.
 

“The relationship between the Lancia models and the design objects selected focuses on a formal, sensory association of atmospheres and material qualities,” said Luca Molinari, curator of the exhibition, “rather than a mere chronological and historical division.” The visitor can use his own dreams and imagination to relive the memories of an epoch, the ever-present appeal of the past and the beauty of the present, through the worlds of Lancia and Italian design.

This dream world, identified with the glorious past but also with the present and the future – conceptually embodied in the new Ypsilon bicolore models - is evoked by a video-installation created by cinema historian Gian Piero Brunetta. The installation, which is ingeniously projected onto a Fulvia Coupé, presents Lancia cars as co-stars of some of the scenes that have contributed to the success of Italian cinema around the world, for ever defining an era with attributes such as beauty, nonchalance, freedom and poetry. In a word, creating the Italian lifestyle that attracted the paparazzi during the unforgettable period of the “Dolce Vita”.

It was in Turin that the Italian cinema industry took its first steps: in 1896 the first projection room was opened there, and the first Italian films were produced in the city. And it was in Turin that Lancia was founded in 1906. The city of Turin, Lancia and the cinema are linked by a bond that has the common denominator of creativeness. And to confirm this bond, this year Lancia will be a Main Sponsor of the International Venice Film Festival.

“Lancia stands for style and elegance; you could say that the brand embodies the values of Italian excellence,” said Olivier François, Lancia Brand Manager, “which is why we decided to combine the points of excellence that have made Italian style famous throughout the world: the car, design and the cinema. Different languages that have made Italian style popular around the world. We have combined them to celebrate one hundred years of Italian history and custom, and to bring out the brand’s genes in a continuous interplay of stimuli, suggestion and evocation.”

Lancia’s attention to the future draws on a contribution from students at the European Design Institute. The creative power of these young people is present at the Lancia Tour Italian Design in a series of initiatives that will be organised between April 5 and 10 at the exhibition venue. Visitors to the exhibition will be able to admire the Lancia Stratos Bertone Zero Prototype, based on the engineering of the Lancia Fulvia coupé HF 1.6, which Bertone presented at the 1970 Turin Motor Show. And on the evening of April 5, an overview of the exhibition will be presented at a party at the Fiat Café inside the Triennial, starting at 8 pm, an opportunity to celebrate the reopening of this well-known Milan club, and to admire a chapter of Italian history written by Lancia.