The Driver
Regular readers might vaguely remember my classic car journey starting with a Lancia. But not anything as exotic as the ‘Steady Special’ or the Dilambda you will read about in these pages. In fact, my Lancia was a wreck that my father had dragged into the back of the garage as a donor car when parts were needed for his 6th Series Lancia Aurelia B20GT, which was in pretty solid condition. So much so, he didn’t really need a spares car, so he came up with the wheeze of gifting the 3rd Series Lancia Aurelia to me as my first car at the age of 16. So began two years of hard labour in the garage, endeavouring to bring the crash-damaged Aurelia back to life.
This ‘wheeze’ was really to keep me in the garage for a few years, out of trouble in pubs and clubs with my ‘normal’ friends who had ‘ordinary’ cars that just worked. My Aurelia was a sort of beige colour, as its damaged panels were finished in undercoat at the front, with some of its original blue hue evident at the rear. Being young and stupid, I decided the dolly-hammered and heavily body-filled coupé had to be painted Retail Red. Well, it was Italian with two doors, just like a real sports car, a rare beast 6000 miles south of Goodwood Circuit. Wish I’d just left it in its original blue with blue two-tone cloth upholstery but, in those days, the whole ‘rat rod’ thing had not yet caught on and classics had to be shiny and smartly presented, so in went full black leather trim. A total waste of money.
The Aurelia’s original 2.5-litre engine had been blown up and replaced with a Ford Essex V6 with much more grunt, so it was fast, but dangerously so, considering its drum brakes, narrow tyres, bodged and rusty bodywork, pyrotechnic electrical system and massive thirst for fuel. Thought it best to get shot of it before it killed me, so I swapped it for an Alfasud! Not the best deal ever exacted in the motor trade. But the ’Sud was reliable and handled like an Italian ballerina. Sadly, it also had to go because it was being eaten alive by rust, as they all were.
At about the same time, my father came across another Lancia, a Fulvia this time. Again Rosso, the 1972 Fulvia was a 1600 HF Series 2 Lusso, a roadgoing version of the famous rally cars. Perched atop fat Cromod
