From today until 9 September Turin is set to host the “Lancia Club Turin International Meeting”, featuring over three hundred vintage cars from all over the world. The public will be able to admire the vintage models in the internal courtyard of Palazzo dell’Arsenale, seat of the Army’s Scuola di Applicazione e Studi Militari.

The participants, famous collectors and Lancia enthusiasts, will be divided into four groups of 75 cars, and will spend six days exploring the industrial history of the city and the region of Piedmont, and visiting its splendid artistic and historic sites. The production range will be represented by almost all the vintage production models, while the special versions will show how the most talented bodyworkers offered winning interpretations of Lancia innovation, technology and performance through time.

Lancia week kicks off today in the historic centre of Turin with a symbolic event: the Lancia Club Italia teams taking part in the international raid taking place in October in the United States will be given their virtual starter’s orders. As well as many Lambda, Astura, Aprilia and Aurelia models there will also be a number of rare vehicles built in the first decade of the last century, like the Alpha, Gamma, Epsilon and Kappa.

From 5 to 8 September the detailed programme will see the four groups taking part in numerous activities such as reliability trials on the Mandria track, motorcades through the most characteristic historic spots of Piedmont, the centre of the town of Saluzzo and Racconigi Park, and through the Langhe, with wine-tasting sessions. The programme also includes visits to Venaria Castle, Racconigi Castle, the Pininfarina Collection, the Palazzina di caccia in Stupinigi and lastly the Lancia assembly lines in the Mirafiori factory.
 

Events include, on Wednesday 6 September, a conference about the centenary held in Palazzo dell’Arsenale, with the participation of celebrities from the motoring world and members of the city council, as well as important entrepreneurs, designers, bodyworkers and race drivers connected to the world of Lancia.  The main event in the city will be the motorcade on Saturday 9 September: all the cars present will perform a procession through Turin, stopping to form a display in one of the city’s most important squares, with a show featuring a selection of the most interesting models.

To commemorate this important motoring event in the city, the "Carlo Biscaretti d Ruffia" National Automobile Museum in Turin is putting on a special exhibition of cars to present a hundred years of history (1906-2006) of the brand, as a tribute to Vincenzo Lancia. The cars on display come partly from the Museum’s collection and partly from private collectors. The exhibition will be open to the public until 26 November 2006, from Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 6.30 pm. The models represent various episodes in the history of Lancia: from the 1914 Theta to the 1919 Kappa, from the 1922 Trikappa to the famous 1928 Lambda. Then there is the 1958 Aurelia Convertible, made famous in the film Il Sorpasso by Dino Risi, and as for the world of racing, the D24 from 1953, an example of state-of-the-art engineering, which was one of the key cars in the Carrera Panamericana the same year. The exhibition takes us up to the 1980’s, with the 1983 LC2 Group C and the 1988 Delta HF Integrale, which won the Rally World Championships two years running.