LANCIA FLAMINIA GT 2.5 3C
Year of manufacture 1964 Recorded mileage 78km (not verified) Asking price €74,950 Vendor Gallery Aaldering, Brummen, The Netherlands; 0031 575 56 40 55; gallery-aaldering.com WHEN IT WAS NEW Price £3775 Max power 117bhp Max torque 137lb ft 0-60mph 13.6 secs Top speed 106mph Mpg 18-25
Martin Buckley’s recent Aurelia vs Flaminia feature (C&SC, September 2020) was a useful reminder of the joys of the later flagship. I’ve long had a soft spot for Lancias – blame rallying a Fulvia and going weak-kneed at just the name ‘Stratos,’ never mind seeing one. Either – okay, probably both – of those would feature in my dream garage, and an Aurelia and or an Appia would be hard to resist, too. So why does the Flaminia tend to fly under the radar?
I found myself asking that question when I stumbled across this 1964 Touring-bodied GT listed with Gallery Aaldering in The Netherlands. “It has been a long time since we have seen such an original Lancia Flaminia,” says Nick Aaldering. So it’s original, not messed about with, but also not concours? Sounds just the ticket. The fact that this is one of 1718 Flaminia GT 2.5 3Cs with Touring’s Superleggera construction doesn’t hurt, either.
As you’d expect from a car that’s being offered by the renowned Dutch specialist, it appears to present very well – this at least in part thanks to a previous restoration and subsequent careful maintenance. Inside it’s even better, a recent retrim bringing new brown leather and carpets that give it a showroom-fresh feel. I love the body-coloured dash, the huge, thin-rimmed three-spoke steering wheel and the stylish dials-within-dials. And those two well-padded chairs look very comfortable.
There’s real drama in the tidy engine bay, too, the all-alloy V6 – an evolution of the first production engine of that configuration – looking magnificent. This example boasts the triple-weber set-up, meaning that it should be more than capable of making light work of 21st-century road conditions, as well as sounding marvellous. Plus, its manual gearbox – described by the vendor as “good and precise” – helps you to make the most of the available power.
An attractive gran turismo that comes close to deserving the ‘sports car’ moniker, it’s a classic to be enjoyed by just two, which is fine by me. And having a good-sized boot plus some space behind the seats means a week’s worth of luggage can easily be accommodated. All that’s left is to pick your destination. It being left-hand drive, I’d cross the Channel and go in search of sunshine and quiet roads. That is what this car was built for, and it would be in its element. And though hardly a pocket-money classic, its relative affordability compared with its Aurelia predecessor means you’d have few qualms about that, too.