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Conservative
thinking went out of the window at the Concorso
d’Eleganza Villa d’Este this weekend as the jury were
locked into a bold mood, electing Chris Hrabalek’s
lurid-orange Lancia Stratos prototype as the ‘Best of
Show’ in its category.
Visually, the
loudest-looking car at the Concorso it clearly stood out
amongst all the other hues, and it certainly grabbed
attention; the crowd in the packed viewing grandstand
reserving the loudest cheer for it as the renown Stratos
collector paraded the car, with plenty of throaty roar from
the engine, across the rolling red carpet at Villa Erba,
which has seen so many of the most famous cars in automotive
history driving across its red carpet.
The jury were
captivated by it and awarded the Stratos the ouright trophy
for Class G, which was held under the title: Italian
Dreams – Show Cars by Italian Designers. "I really
didn't think it was going to win," a clearly delighted Chris
told Italiaspeed after the award was handed over, "I
thought no jury would be brave enough to vote for a car that
advanced, Villa d'Este has a tradition of very grand
designs, which are coachbuilt in a typical way."
The story of
this amazing car starts in 1970 at the prestigious Turin
Motor Show where the famous Italian design house Bertone
showed off a radical new concept sports car which it dubbed
the Stratos, powered by a Fulvia HF 1600 engine, but mounted
in the centre of the chassis driving the rear wheels. With
the approval of Lancia, development began of a more
practical sports car based loosely on this design, and one
year later, again at the Turin Motor Show, the Lancia
Stratos HF was shown to the world, the amazing concept car
which captured the crowd's hearts at Ville Erba on Sunday
afternoon.
Retaining the
same basic idea, but with major styling changes, such as the
addition of operational doors, the Stratos HF was still at
this stage just a show car. It was regarded as wildly
futuristic, a concept that grabbed the world’s attention in
Turin, where it stood out in part thanks to its fluorescent
red colour scheme - a bold flourish simply unheard of in
that era.
"I think the
most amazing thing on the car is the matt florescent
colour," agrees Chris. "If you put it into context that car
was done in 1970, it was brave enough to make a car in
florescent but to make it matt, that was unheard of! Matt is
a colour that is trendy now, if you look at the recent
motors shows a lot of cars and concepts are matt; but this
car is matt, with matt gold wheels and it just shows how
futuristic it was. The Stratos was really ahead of its time.
The prototype was really the way the designers saw it, it
doesn't have any compromises in terms of ergonomics or costs
or parts sharing or the similar, so everything is the way
they really wanted it."
The Stratos
prototype is actually listed as a 1970 car in its
homologation papers as it was completed later that year,
and, as Chris reveals, the fluorescent red is just one of
three colours that adorned its dramatic bodywork during its
life; while it also was fitted with three power units –
firstly a 1600cc engine from the Lancia Fulvia, then a
twin-cam in-line four from a Beta, and finally the Dino V6
engine with which the model would eventually make its
reputation.
"Its completely
different [to the production cars], says Chris, who also
owns the world's only remaining Group 5 factory built racer.
"It has an aluminium body and wishbone suspension, its
longer, wider, slightly more interior room, and every
surface is different, so if you put a standard car next to
it you would see how significantly different it is. So for
someone who doesn't know the Stratos at first glance they
might think it's the same, but it's completely different.
Different grilles, two windscreen wipers, wheels that
Gandini did just for this car that are three piece wheels,
it's something really special."
After the
fluorescent red colour scheme, the Stratos was painted white
(although the Lancia Italia decals were simply covered up
during the process and carry through) whilst it undertook
rigorous testing; however following a crash it received new
cut-out sections on top of the clamshell and the rear, and
was returned to the originally eye-catching vivid colour
scheme. Finally in 1974, before it headed to rest in the
Lancia museum, it was painted in the red-and-white colours
of Marlboro to reflect the cigarette manufacturer's
sponsorship of the factory rally team at the time.
"Effectively I'm
the first owner of the car even though it passed through
several hands in the shortest of times after it left the
Lancia museum," notes Chris, an Austrian who is based in
London. "Lancia put it in the museum in 1979 and locked it
away, it wasn't in the open part, and in the early 1990s
they decided to sell it off as they needed some space. I
still also have the original wooden buck that they used to
panel beat the aluminium; because the body is all aluminium
you can really see the edges a lot harder on the prototype,
there is more detail that got lost in the translation to
fibreglass, because the fibreglass body has a lot more
radiuses its not possible to make these hard edges."
Almost four decades on and it is still
just as dramatic and modern a sight, and a real crowd
pleaser whenever it appears in public. Meanwhile, in the
intervening period, the Stratos earned its rightful place in
the history books as one of the finest Italian sports cars
ever made, as well as a rally winner on the world stage.
Prior to showing the prototype at the
Geneva Motor Show in 2005 alongside his new Stratos concept,
Chris, who also owns the rights to the name, had it fully
restored by Bertone, who returned the car entirely to its
original condition, with the additional holes being removed
(which also allows the unique Stratos decal to be reapplied
to the rear panel) and returned to fluorescent red.
by Edd Ellison
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