Lancia gained early success in Group B rallying with the sublime 037.Richard Heseltinegets to grips with the roadgoing Stradale version
Remember your impulse control, or rather that you have one. Yes, it’s a Group B car, and this is the perfect playground in which to enjoy it, but don’t come over all Stig of the Dump Valve straightaway – not that this car has a turbocharger, you understand. Just take in your surroundings, get a feel for it. At first glance the Lancia 037 makes few concessions to user-friendliness. The vinyl-wrapped rollcage and chunky door bars leave you in no doubt that it is a competition tool, as do the black anodised aluminium dashboard, the profusion of screwheads and the exposed fuses.
There are some token nods to civility: there are carpets and seats trimmed in corduroy as befits a ‘street’ version, but it doesn’t exactly scream urbanity. Ahead of you there are odd-looking pull-switches, a smattering of warning lights, while the rev-counter and speedo are flanked by gauges for oil temperature, oil pressure, fuel level, boost, and water temperature. It’s all a bit ‘parts bin special’ in here, though, the steering wheel having been appropriated from a Fiat 131, and the Veglia flash clock serves as a reminder of just about every Italian saloon car of the 1970s and early ’80s.
Your view ahead is reduced by the stout tube across the top of the windscreen, which ties the A-pillars together, although the two small ‘bumps’ in the roof ensure that your head doesn’t make contact with the headlining. What is noticeably lacking, however, is meaningful ventilation. It’s boiling in here, even at rest, which makes you appreciate the efforts of the star drivers of the day all the more. The Group B era was the most extreme of any period in rallying, and the 037 was the first car built explicitly to class regulations rather than adapted to fit.
Scroll back to late 1979 and various proposals within Abarth, which headed Lancia and Fiat’s competition bids, had been flagged up and shot down. There was Project SE 036, a mid-engined sports car powered by a longitudinally mounted Ferrari V8. The brilliant Sergio Limone plotted this brave new world, but the scheme came to nought due to its relative complexity. He also pitched something akin to the Renault 5 Turbo using the Fiat Ritmo (or Strada, as we knew it in the UK) as a donor car. He suggested taking the front-wheel-drive hatchback and inserting a supercharged 131 Abarth Rallye engine lengthway
