How Lancia's WRC trailblazer became a cult classic

Its striking silhouette and evocative V6 engine note are unmistakable. There hasn’t been a car in the rally world quite like the Lancia Stratos.

This Italian short-wheelbase, wedge-shaped weapon ripped up previous conventions, changed the game in rally car design, and left stunned rivals in its wake. It won 18 WRC rallies, scored 29 podiums, racked up 480 stage wins and collected three world titles (1974-76) to put Lancia firmly on the motorsport map.

Half a century on from its World Rally Championship debut in 1974, the Stratos has earned cult status. It was one of those cars that seemed destined for success and to frighten its rivals, according to Cesare Fiorio, who as Lancia boss was among the instrumental figures behind its birth.

“If you look at the Stratos today it looks like a modern car except for some details, but it is a car that is more than 50 years old,” he says. “When we arrived with this type of car, we really stopped all the others competing because we were so much quicker on asphalt or on gravel and even on the snow. We were fast everywhere. It would win rallies and it was within the regulations.

“When I managed to put together all of the ideas and all of the requests from all of the people involved in this project, I understood that we would have something that was ages ahead of everybody. It was exactly what happened.”

The Stratos’s beginnings can be traced back to 1970, when renowned Italian designer Bertone – led by Marcello Gandini, who penned the Lamborghini Miura – showcased the Stratos Zero concept car at the Turin Motor Show. It was aimed as a replacement for the Fulvia, which had dominated the Italian Rally Championship scene from 1965 and won the 1972 FIA International Championship for Manufacturers – the precursor to the World Rally Championship. Creating a car to eclipse the Fulvia was not the work of a moment, and ex-Formula 1 driver-turned-engineer Mike Parkes became the lead development engineer for the Stratos.

The Stratos instantly stood out from its rivals from its concept stage

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“Before starting the project, I went to all the people involved in my team – the drivers, the mechanics and the engineers, the electricians, the people who look after the car in service – and they gave me some ideas as to what was necessary to be competitive,” explains Fiorio.
“I wrote this down in a book and then gave it to Bertone and Gandini. We also gave him the dimension of the car – I didn’t want it longer than three metres and 70 centimetres.”

A year later, a more refined Stratos HF, weighing in at approximately 950kg, was unveiled at the Turin Motor Show, fitted with a mid-mounted Ferrari Dino V6, an engine that had been earmarked for the car since the start of the project. To push forward with this engine, which would become a key component, it required a visit to Maranello to convince Enzo Ferrari to allow the Fiat-owned Lancia to use the Dino V6.

“When I went around the Fiat Group and they had in mind this very special car, I couldn’t find any type of engine which would fit and be sufficient to make the car competitive,” recalls Fiorio. “I went to Ferrari and I thought he would not even know who I am and what I’m asking for. But he said he knew everything about our competition plans and said that we were very good because we win, and we spend little money. He said, ‘OK, I will give you the block, the crank, the cylinder heads, and you will take care of the rest.’”

“I think if Fiat didn’t own Lancia at that time the Stratos would have won five consecutive championships instead of three” Cesare Fiorio

Armed with an agreement to take 500 Dino V6 engines from Ferrari, the Stratos project encountered its next chapter. There were teething issues mounting the Dino V6, but by 1973 the car had chalked up a milestone first win, when Sandro Munari and Mario Mannucci took a Marlboro-liveried Stratos to victory at the Firestone Rally in Spain on 8 April. A triumph at the Tour de France Automobile followed in September to signal the car’s credentials, as production of the 500 models required to secure Group 4 homologation continued at pace.

It wasn’t until October the following the year that the Stratos made its WRC debut in the middle of a season that had been decimated by a global fuel crisis. Rising oil prices, a result of the Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) implementing an embargo against the countries who had supported Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, reduced a 13-round season to eight events, beginning in Portugal in March. The Monte Carlo, Sweden, Acropolis, Austria, Poland and Morocco events were all cancelled.

Lancia would find itself going up against its owner Fiat, which fielded its 124 Abarth, and Ford with its Escort RS1600. The season actually began with Lancia fielding its ageing Fulvia, which scored a third place in Munari’s hands on the Safari Rally, before the Stratos received Group 4 homologation a day before the Sanremo Rally. With only five events of the season remaining, thoughts of a title push had never crossed Fiorio’s mind.

Munari secured victory on WRC debut with the Stratos - a warning for the rest of the field

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“Everybody had many points and were fighting each other and I said, ‘OK, we will start in October but we don’t go after the championship’, and there were still five events to go,” reflects Fiorio. “One was Sanremo, then there was Canada [Rally of the Rideau Lakes], the USA [Press on Regardless Rally], Great Britain [RAC] and Corsica [Tour de Corse].”

The Stratos’s WRC debut could hardly have gone better. Munari defeated a fleet of seven Fiats, four of which crashed out on the first stage, to take a maiden WRC win for the car on home soil. It had sent a message to the rallying world, which it emphatically backed up when Munari took victory in the next event in Canada later that month.

A measured run to third on the RAC under the orders of Fiorio set up a chance for Lancia to seal the world championship on Corsica’s ribbons of asphalt, where the Stratos was honed and at the peak of its power. Jean-Claude Andruet beat a pair of Alpine A110s – the car the Frenchman drove in 1973 to help Alpine claim that year’s championship – to seal a remarkable unlikely maiden world title for Lancia (with 94 points to the 69 of Fiat). It was the only world title that season, since the drivers’ championship wasn’t introduced until 1979.

“We were able to change the situation of the championship within three months,” says Fiorio of the first of Lancia’s record 10 WRC world titles. “I remember at the RAC I had only one car that was competitive with Sandro Munari. He could have won that event, but all the time I was saying, ‘You must go slowly, because if you finish within the first three, we shall be in a position to win the championship.’ He finished third because I slowed him down all the time.

“I think my favourite event was when we won the Corsica rally because there we put in maximum effort as I knew that if we won there, we should be world champions. I knew that the car was adapted to that kind of event, and I would say it was one of our best efforts and best results. I was more interested in world championship motorsport than what happens on the commercial side, so I was fighting for motorsport, and I knew with that car that motorsport would be an easy task for us to win.”

This was just the start of the Stratos domination. Over the next two seasons, Lancia upgraded its engine to a 24-valve version that could generate 320bhp, only enhancing its power-to-weight-ratio advantage. These were banned by the sport’s governing body before the start of the 1978 season.

Lancia dominated in 1975 with the Stratos and its upgraded 24-valve engine

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In 1975, Lancia successfully defended its title with the Stratos, now resplendent in Alitalia colours, by winning four rallies. Munari eclipsed the Fiats of Hannu Mikkola and Markku Alen to win the Monte Carlo season opener; Bjorn Waldegard beat Stig Blomqvist on the Swedish snow and took the spoils in Sanremo; and Frenchman Bernard Darniche mastered Corsica’s famed rally of 10,000 corners. Once again Lancia had beaten Fiat, this time by 96 points to 61.

The championship hat-trick arrived in 1976 when the Stratos racked up four more wins, Munari taking three to Waldegard’s one. The first was a podium lockout in Monte Carlo as Lancia dominated the tricky Alpine roads, with Munari adding wins in Portugal and Corsica. Waldegard’s solitary triumph came after controversial team orders from Fiorio on the Sanremo as Lancia wrapped up a second 1-2-3.

But this was the start of the end of the factory-backed Stratos programme. Lancia’s owner, the Fiat Group, shifted its focus to the 131 Abarth to head up its works WRC programme from 1977. It ended a period of Stratos domination that appeared to have much more left in the tank.

"If you look at the car now, it looks like a car from the 2000s and not the 1970s" Cesare Fiorio

“I think if Fiat didn’t own Lancia at that time the Stratos would have won five consecutive championships instead of three,” reckons Fiorio. “In the first championship we had such an advantage on everybody, but the idea from Fiat was to run with a proper car [the Fiat 131], so they stopped the Stratos which still won some world championship rallies as a privately run car after 1976.

“With the Stratos for sure we could have won the following two or three titles, but then I don’t know what the evolution of the other cars would have been. I didn’t know what we could add to the Stratos to make it quicker and what the others would do in order to compete against us. I don’t know how long we could have won the championship, but for sure those two years after 1976 we could have won easily.”

The Stratos remained on the WRC scene through privately run entries, and would continue to win rallies, with Darniche recording its 18th and last triumph on Corsica in 1981, eight years after its WRC debut. Lancia did redevelop the Stratos into a sportscar competing in Group 5 circuit racing events, but it enjoyed limited success. On the stages is where the Stratos is most fondly remembered.

The Stratos was limited to privately-run entries from 1976, but still picked up regular wins

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It kicked off Lancia’s WRC success story that led to the development of its 037, which became the last two-wheel-drive car to win the world title in 1983, before it was superseded by the fire-breathing Delta S4, and then the Group A Delta Integrale that won six consecutive championships from 1987-92. And the Stratos can still be seen tackling the world’s toughest roads. Last year Seb Perez helped create new fans of the machine when he took on the Roger Albert Clark Rally driving his ear-splitting 24-valve version.

For Fiorio, who went on to become sporting director at the Ferrari, Ligier and Minardi Formula 1 teams, the Stratos will forever hold a special place in his memory.

“During my career that lasted about 40 years in motorsport I worked on so many cars, but this one is very special,” he sighs. “It was the first car after the Fulvia and after the Stratos we made the 037, which was a modern interpretation of this Stratos idea of being mid-engined and very light with good visibility for the drivers and good accessibility to all of the mechanical parts. I would say if you look at the car now, it looks like a car from the 2000s and not the 1970s.”

Fiorio sees the Stratos as a special car which came before its time

Photo by: Ercole Colombo

Lancia Stratos top WRC moments

Sanremo 1974: A new winner arrives
Total confirmation that Lancia had indeed built a real rally weapon arrived when the Stratos took its first World Rally Championship win on its series debut on home soil at the Sanremo Rally. It only received its FIA Group 4 homologation a day before the rally started. Sandro Munari claimed the dream result to ignite Lancia’s title surge.

Sweden 1975: Sliding to victory on the snow
Bjorn Waldegard took his first WRC win on the snow in Sweden to further underline the Stratos’s credentials. Waldegard was narrowly trailing compatriot Stig Blomqvist until his Saab 96 suffered an engine failure. Blomqvist was handed a penalty after team-mate Per Eklund gave him an illegal push, which helped Waldegard to victory.

Monte Carlo 1976: Utter domination
Sandro Munari recorded the Stratos’s first Monte Carlo Rally win in 1975, but the following season saw the Italian brand utterly dominate the event. Munari once again took the spoils, heading home team-mates Bjorn Waldegard and Bernard Darniche to lock out the podium. It marked the perfect start to the Stratos’s third and final WRC title.

Sanremo 1976: Controversial Stratos 1-2
Team orders added spice to the 1976 Sanremo Rally as Sandro Munari and Bjorn Waldegard were locked in an intense battle. Waldegard led by four seconds heading into the final stage before team boss Cesare Fiorio held Waldegard back by 4s to give both drivers an equal fight for the win. Waldegard triumphed by 4s in a Stratos 1-2-3-4.

Corsica 1981: The final hurrah
As the WRC hurtled into a new era led by Audi’s revolutionary four-wheel-drive Quattro, the Renault 5 Turbo and Opel Ascona, the Stratos claimed its 18th and final WRC win. Bernard Darniche guided a privately run Stratos to his record sixth win on Corsica’s twisty asphalt roads, just the kind of event for which the car was tailor-made.

Darniche took the final victory in a Stratos at the 1981 in Corsica

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