NOT JUST ANY OLD LANCIA
1962 FLAMINIA ZAGATO
THE Y S AY A L L R OADS — V I A F L AMINI A B E I NG ONE O F T HE M — L EAD T O R OME . PAUL H ALFORD L E D T HI S F L AMINI A F ROM A NATION O F G REAT S PORTS C ARS T O A N EW HOME I N N E W ZEAL AND
You’d be hard-pressed to find a classic car enthusiast who doesn’t agree that twoseater Italian sports cars represent a high point of automotive expression, both of a national character and of beautiful cars. Ferrari is the standard-bearer for this art form, for a multitude of reasons: consider the Prancing Horse logo; say the onomatopoeic name — and think of a revving V12 — picture the bright red colour adopted by all of the Italy’s race cars; and don’t forget the millions of dollars that Ferrari 250 GTOS, or anything that looks like them, command.
Part of what makes them so great is the mountain of other beautiful and brilliant cars that Ferrari had to climb to reach that pinnacle. The ’50s, ’60s, and early ’ 70s were the era of the great Italian carrozzieri — Italian coachbuilding legends such as Bertone, Ghia, Pininfarina, Vignale, Scaglietti, Touring, and Zagato.
Elegance
There’s real elegance in the lightness of touch in cars of that era, especially in the glasshouses and C-pillars, as well as the subtle curves of wings and rear quarters. When other nations’ cars were becoming increasingly creased and folded — and despite Pininfarina’s flirtation with fins — the Italians largely remained faithful to their well-honed aesthetic, incorporating subtle hard chines that didn’t detract from a flowing form. That tradition meant that car companies could focus on the engineering, then go to one or several studios to turn their chassis and running gear into something quite beautiful.
Perhaps that’s a defining characteristic of Italian cars of that era. Other nations’ marques built cars that established a national style, but, more than any other nation’s, you can characterize Italian cars as beautiful.
A family trait
That’s good news for classic car enthusiasts. It means there are other great Italian cars to find, and, while they are no longer cheap, they represent great value compared with the supercars — gelato to the creamiest supercar ice cream. They were created the same way, and made the same way, by some of the same people, and many of them have the added charm of being different and therefore more special.
Lancia was one of the Italy’s top six marques, alongside Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Ferrari, and Maserati, but, like other great carmakers before it, Lancia fell victim to putting pride ahead of profit.
Eccentrics
Collector, vintage and classic racer, and Italian sports car enthusiast Paul Halford has fallen under the Lancia spell. He was taking part in the Tour Auto classic rally in France in an Alfa Giulia GTA a few years back when a Lancia Aurelia B20, quite a few years older than the Alfa, went flying past. That got his attention.
“Then I started looking at who owned them, and they were all eccentric, unusual types who appreciated something a bit different. I started reading about them, and thought, I’ve got to have one of those,” he recalls.
Paul mixes in a wide circle of classic car enthusiasts, who “all rate these things as incredible bits of gear,” he says.
Innovative
Lancia invented the V6 engine and the V4. It designed inboard rear brakes to reduce unsprung weight, which also meant that the cars had independent rear suspension. It invented its own sliding-pillar front suspension and used it right through until the Flaminia, which adopted wishbones and coil springs. The Flaminia Berlina had a rearwindscreen wiper, which actually operated simultaneously on the inside and outside of the screen. Flaminias — early Berlinas being the exception — were the first cars to have disc brakes all round.
One of the owner’s maintenance tasks on the sliding pillar– equipped Lancias, especially after a bit of a break from the car, was to go under the bonnet and lift a plunger to lubricate the suspension, then flick a lever to lubricate the other side. Alongside it was a similar plunger, which helped preload the brake master cylinder. Lancia owners were expected to take part in their engineering tour de force.
Driving experience
“Maybe that’s what young guys — the thousands of people who would rather be on a screen — are missing; maybe they’re missing involvement with the experience of driving,” says Paul. “In a modern car, you never get to explore its outer limits, because they are so far away; the computers are driving it for you.”
Lancias, he says, are driver’s cars, every bit as much as other Italia exotica, which might explain why more of them were sold as two-plus-twos or twoseater sports cars than four-door Berlinas.
Pininfarina based its design for the Aurelia replacement, the Flaminia, on it’s four-door Florida show specials. Lancia built around 4000 Berlinas in its own factory, while Pininfarina built around 5000 of its coupé variant. Touring built another 2000 of the distinctive four-headlight GT, GTLS, and cabrios. Zagato built nearly 600 of the Sports model — of which our feature is one — and nearly 350 of the Super Sports model, which had the larger and later 2.8-litre motor.
Perfect as ...
Paul bought this 1962 Zagato Sports car in Italy three years ago. It was described as “perfect”. He says ‘perfect’ must have a slightly different meaning in Italian, but, after some protracted negotiation, he secured it. He already owned a Lancia Aurelia, the model that preceded the Flaminia, but could not let this one go after missing out on an almost-identical car, another Flaminia 2.5 3C in silver, at an auction in Monterey a decade earlier.
Paul and a friend spent two weeks driving the car through Europe, and got within 30km of Calais before the car expired on the autoroute. They were towed to a garage, which found flaking paint inside the air-box; this might have been blocking the carburettor jets. They called a truce and went via public transport to a friend’s house north of London to fetch a trailer with which to collect the car from France. After two trips through the Chunnel, they set to work cleaning and balancing the three carbs, fixed a float, checked the plugs, drained the fuel,
and reset the points, but they were still stumped when Paul had to return to New Zealand. It turned out the mounting plate for the points was rotating.
Paul kept the car in the UK for a couple of years. He made regular visits to Europe to take part in classic racing and rally events, and liked to have a car there as a daily-driver, giving him something in common with Enzo Ferrari. Enzo was spoilt for choice, of course, but his daily-driver for many years was a Lancia Flaminia.
Paul is in a good position to assess how Lancia moved the marque on from the Aurelia, with its classic ’50s vertical shield-shaped front grille, to the lower and wider stance of the ’60s Flaminia. The two have a similar 2.5-litre V6. The 3C has triple carbs, hence the name, but Paul’s Aurelia, which came out with a single carb, has an optional Nardi manifold with twin downdraught Webers. They both have transaxles — rear-axle, rear-mounted gearboxes — giving a 50/50 weight distribution for good handling. In keeping with the Lancia tradition of the time, they were both named after Roman roads.
The Aurelia B20 came out with a column change, but, while Paul’s car has been converted to the Nardi floor-change, the four-on-the-floor gearbox in the Flaminia is better. It shares with the Aurelia the traditional large Lancia steering wheel, but Paul says that the steering in the Flaminia is much lighter. The car’s aluminium body no doubt helps to make it a sharper package. The new unequal-length wishbone front suspension, it’s balance, and inboard rear brakes also help — although it still has Lancia’s trademark clotted cream– coloured steel wheels.
“They’re incredibly heavy,” Paul says, “but it goes where you want it to. It doesn’t have a mind of its own like a lot of classic cars. Having the right tyres is important, too. They are tall and not very wide, and people assume that they won’t have much grip, but they have fabulous grip. It’s a driver’s car.”
Enzo [Ferrari] was spoilt for choice, of course, but his daily-driver for many years was a Lancia Flaminia
The second practice session for the US Grand Prix (GP) was just finishing as I arrived at the Mcmurrays’ large, comfortable home in semi-rural north-west Auckland. You’d think that, after spending so much of his life wrapped up in Formula 1 (F1), Bob might not be quite as keen as he once was, but he was able to give me a full summary of what had happened.
Bob is a fan; listen to him on a Monday evening between 6pm and 7pm on Radio Sport as he fizzes about the latest drama in the Aussie V8s, waxes lyrical about the most recent round of Motogp, interviews Hayden Paddon or a star of the future, or rants about the current state of F1 — you can’t do that for as long he’s done it without a passion for the sport, and Bob’s got that in spades. He’s also a passionate Kiwi — despite being English by birth; ask him who he’s cheering for, irrespective of whether the game is being played at Twickenham or Lords — it’s New Zealand every time. After visiting in 1974 and 1975, at the end of the Formula 2 (F2) seasons, Bob and his wife Shaune first came to live here in 1976. However, only a few months later, they were back in England, working for a team with which Bob had already formed quite a bond — Mclaren — and he remained a Mclaren man until returning permanently to New Zealand after the end of the 2002 season.
The Mclaren pub
Bob and Shaune have known each other since they were five, and he frequently asks her, “What year was that?” or “What was that bloke’s name?”
“Shaune and I started rallying a Mini before we ran out of money,” Bob tells us. “We had mates who went to Brands Hatch, so we’d trek across the country — this was the mid ’60s — and I think the first thing that really impressed me was seeing Sir John Whitmore and Jim Clark going at it in a pair of Lotus Cortinas. Then, in about 1965, I saw a Formula 3 race and discovered that these open-wheeler things were proper racing cars.”
In 1968, a Kiwi mechanic keen on motor racing turned up in England and, as was so often the case, found his way to Mclaren. Enter Ian Griffiths — or ‘Griff’, as he was known.
Bob explains: “Griff was dating Shaune’s sister, and, before long, I was meeting Griff at The Golden Cross on a Friday night — it was the Mclaren pub, and of course I got to know a lot of the mechanics. They were predominantly Kiwis, and I just enjoyed the environment so much.”
Soon, Bob was hanging around with Griff at Mclaren HQ.
“I met and spoke with Bruce on occasion — he used to refer to me as ‘the nameless mate’,” says Bob. “I just loved seeing the cars being made. I wasn’t a mechanic, but I had some mechanical ability. One day, I was given a gearbox to put back together, and I did it. Shaune and I were engaged, and the exposure to all these Kiwis meant that New Zealand was the only place we wanted to be.”
At that point, Bob hadn’t given any thought to actually working in F1, or even motor racing — “We just looked upon Mclaren as a social club, and going to the car racing was just a thing we did,” he recalls. However, all of that changed on a sodden 12 April 1970 at Brands Hatch.
“I was on Paddock Bend for a sports car race — in fact, round three of that year’s championship — and Pedro Rodríguez defied logic and physics; it was as if he had a dry track and everyone else was skating around in the wet. If I had a turning-point moment,
Picking a future classic, hmm. There are some that are already moving firmly into that territory, such as almost any old square Mercedes, or SL roadsters; E30 BMWS; and other straight-six, naturally aspirated BMWS. A lot of Saabs would make the grade, early Toyota Hilux, both first and second generation, Triumph 2000 saloons and Rover 3500s. On the Japanese front, first-model Corollas would surely get recognition, S-type Hondas. Can’t go wrong with a Subaru WRX or an early Mitsi Evo. Toyota MR2, Nissan Silvias and Godzillas. I think the early fourwheel-drive Subaru Leones would be on the list too. We had one as a work car and build quality was way above the Lasers we also ran. As for more modern stuff, struggling now. A Honda Jazz? Great packaging. Maybe the ’83–’87 Toyota Corolla (E80) — lighter than later models, with a super-willing 12-valve 1300 and tidier handling than most rivals — as well as cars with the fantastic 20-valve DOHC 4A-GE engines. Later stuff is harder still to pick. The only thing that comes to mind unbidden is a Nissan X-trail. The last of the big square ones, before they went all swoopy. Roomy, practical shape like a very unfussy, unshowy but civilized Land Rover. Sorry about that, Landy fans.
Cheers, Peter I