Duster_UK took these shots a couple months back. What a find!

Got some Lancia porn for you - I took the attached pictures yesterday (Sunday) after leaving the Barbican Arts Centre in the City of London. The car was parked on Chiswell Street EC1. I should explain that the City of London is the financial part, where all the banks are, the oldest part of London. There are some residential properties there, but as you can imagine it is seriously expensive. Being a Sunday the parking restrictions are relaxed which might explain how this Lancia came to be parked there (it also means I could take my own car into town - new Fiat 500 by the way).

On to the Lancia, which is of course a Lancia Fulvia 1600HF. The registration plate suffix is 'L'. which means the car was registered between the 1st August 1972 and the 31st July 1973. However as you can see the licence plate is black with silver letters in a non-reflective material, and only cars built before 1st January 1973 are permitted to still use this old style colour scheme. It's clearly badged as an HF, although I thought all the HF models had the larger inner headlights, I'm not a Lancia expert. The car looked to have a nice used patina but was in fine condition overall.

I also have a literal metric fuck-tonne of photos I took from a local classic car show last weekend. There is about 400 in all, although I have not yet sorted the good ones from the dross. However I do have some Jalopnik money shots in the form of a working Lucas coil under the bonnet of an over restored MGB GT, a mint TR6 with the bonnet up and jump leads attached, and lots of Lotus Carlton shots (including the under bonnet VIN plate identifying it as a Lotus model). There are various Rovers (a P4 and a P6), an Escort Mexico, some Triumphs (including a Herald and TWO Stags), various porrigdey Austins named after quaint English towns with cathedrals, an NYPD P71 Crown Victoria, a Buick Skylark (70's, I haven't identified the year yet).

Face it, what does the $9,000,000 '62 Ferrari 330 have that a Malaise Era Alfa or Lancia doesn't have? Wait, don't answer that! Instead, consider this: for around 1/9000th the price, you can have a sporty machine from the very same country!

What kind of car can you get for $1,250 these days? Maybe a 15-year-old Sentra, speckled with shopping-cart dings and filled with the smell of countless spilled McDonald's chocolate shakes? Or an Olds Cutlass Ciera with a potato for a gas cap and Bondo-and-rust clusters falling off on every speed bump? How depressing! But wait- what if we were to find you a genuine Alfa Romeo GTV for that price? A car with just 58,000 miles on the clock, because more than half its life has been spent sitting in a garage… waiting for you to rescue it? No, really! Here's a "garage find" '74 Alfa Romeo GTV (go here if the listing disappears) for next to nothing. It appears to be complete, and the seller says the "motor and tranny seem to be somewhat clean and oil free," which we hope isn't referring to their innards. Who knows, it will never might start right up with a simple tune-up! You might need to do a little metal cutting and pasting once you do have it running, because the seller admits that it has "all the usual rust problems of an alfa," and the registration paperwork will require negotiating labyrinths of bureaucracy you never imagined existed a bit of work, due to the car's "unknown title." Is an unknown title worse than a missing one? Never you mind about that stuff- just buy this project and start enjoying the benefits of an Italian basket case daily driver in about 10 years no time!

Everyone loves an Alfa, of course, but what would Fabio drive? A Lancia, of course! You can still buy Fabio's Appia, which hasn't dropped in price by a single lira in the last couple of years, but you might not have the pecs and/or hair to pull off looking cool in a cute little sedan. But buy this '75 Lancia Beta (go "http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/jalopnik/2009/11/75_lanciabeta-ss.jpg"/>here if the listing disappears) and you'll find your image on the covers of paperback bodice-rippers within weeks of getting it running. Of course, that might be akin to cleaning the Augean stables a couple of weekends of work, considering that it needs a "new timing belt to run and a little TLC" (translation for those of you who don't speak Craigslist-ese: "Something terrible is wrong with the engine, including what you hope will be just the timing belt"). But hey, Mr. or Ms. Thousandaire, imagine yourself behind the wheel of a genuine Italian sports coupe and it will all seem worthwhile.

As a reminder, you can see the full six-hour block of "World Rally Madness" starting at 5 PM EST this Sunday, October 4th on HD Theater.

Courtesy HD Theater / WRC.com

That's why we're going with a couple of classic Italian machines once again, only this time we're going a lot skinflintier on the budget side. Just how cheap are today's totally easy projects? 500 bucks apiece! That's right, we're looking at sure-fire Index Of Effluency contenders for potential 24 Hours Of LeMons teams. Whether you decide to race one of these beauties or turn it into a painfully cool daily driver, you should be able to do it by investing just a 55 gallon drum brimming with little sweat and a cubic foot of few dollars.

Why is it that those lucky Yurpeans got almost all of the Lancia Betas? The first new model manufactured by Lancia after being taken over by Fiat, the Beta had a screamin' Fiat Twin Cam engine, front wheel drive, four wheel disc brakes, and all sorts of excessively complex innovative suspension features. You'd think they'd have sold like crazy in Malaise Era North America, but these days you'd be lucky to find one Beta per time zone. As for getting one for a 3-figure price, forget it! No, don't forget it, because this 1977 Lancia Beta Berlina (go here if the listing disappears), located in theoretically rust-free New Mexico, is ready to clank into your life for just cinquecento bucks! It appears that most of the paint on its horizontal surface has been burned off by the desert sun, and we must assume that the interior is in hopeless somewhat rough shape, but then we see those three magical PCH words in the listing ("ran when parked") and we know everything will be just fine! Thanks to five_on_ninetyeight for the tip.

Front wheel drive? Unless we're talking about a Citroën or maybe a 500-cubic-inch Eldorado, it's tough to work up the motivation to sacrifice your mental, physical, and fiscal health on the Hell Garage altar for a front-driver. You've got plenty of Italian rear-drive options available, and things get even better when you start thinking about horsepower-doubling engine swaps. Say, a Fiat 1100 with the original 1098cc engine torn out and replaced with a powerplant nearly twice as big? But where would you find that, you ask? A Texas rattlesnake hissed out a message about this 1959 Fiat 1100 with Toyota engine (go here if the listing disappears), and we're passing it on to you! Only $500, and the engine-donor car drove itself to the garage under its own power. The engine looks like a Toyota A of some sort, and the front suspension from the unidentified Toyota was swapped in as an added bonus. Not only that, the seller says he's "built several before," so you know he or she must have all the engineering tricks worked out by now- most likely you'll be able to just smash your skull against tinker with it for several eternities a couple of afternoons and get this ToyoFiat into fully roadworthy (or raceworthy) shape!

We've got a couple of deals from the Deep South here, an Italian 3-fer and a Brazilian-German 2-fer, and they're priced like it's 1865 all over again! Saddle up the trailers, carpetbaggers!

I've been doing my best to interest wannabe 24 Hours Of LeMons teams in the idea of racing a Lancia instead of, say, an RX-7 or noch ein Scheiß-E30, but so far none of them seems to understand the sheer Italian awesomeness of Lancia iron. Why, Jeremy Clarkson himself selected a Lancia Beta to drive across Namibia. That's bad news for LeMons, but great news for you, because this '81 Lancia Zagato in Chattanooga (go here if the listing disappears) has a clapped-out-Kia-grade price tag of only 700 bucks. But wait, there's more! You see, you don't just get the Lancia with this deal; you also get a pair of Fiats, including a 124 Spider and a "sedan" of some sort. A 128? 130? Polski 125p? Don't waste time agonizing over the identity of the Mystery Fiat Sedan, because you also get a vast hoard of rusty-ass crap precious spare parts, including four engines!

You say you don't want an instant Italian junkyard on your property? Normally we'd say you need to get your priorities straight, pal, but passing up the Lancia/Fiat Bonanza means your garage still has room for this L'Automobile Ventura with bonus VW Type 3 Fastback deal (go here if the listing disappears). The price is double that of the Lancia/Fiat deal, and you only get two cars… but such cars! The Brazilian-made L'Automobile Ventura was a fiberglass-bodied sports car based on an air-cooled VW pan, but don't go mixing it up with the Puma GT; the Ventura came with a pancake Type 3 engine with crank-driven fan, so it has room for storage in the rear. As for styling, who could resist a car with lines that pay homage to the Nissan 300ZX, Jensen Interceptor, and Chrysler Laser? Exactly! But hold on there, because the Ventura isn't all you get here; the seller purchased a '72 Volkswagen Fastback as an engine donor car for the regrettably non-powered Ventura, but then didn't have the heart to sacrifice the Volks. That means the yard next to the double-wide has two too many vehicles, and they've got to go! The Fastback's engine is in good shape, except for the minor issue of non-functioning fuel injection, and it even has the super-rare (and nonworking) air-conditioning option. That's right, VW buyers in 1972 were able to drain 20 or so of the car's 65 horsepower by hitting the AC button! All tires are rotten. No mention of rust. The lack of title on the Ventura might make for some comedic moments at the DMV, but we're sure the DMV clerks will be quite understanding about your unregistered, undocumented orphan car from a country they've probably never heard of. Thanks to Nagruv5150 for the tip!

Eight hundred miles in the dark, four hundred milligrams of caffeine consumed from cans and ceramic cups and there it is: Lake Como. The road approaches from the top of the steep hills which flank its five cubic miles of frigid slate-gray water. We descend toward the city of Como then on to Cernobbio, home of the Villa d’Este, a magnificent lakeside hotel built half a millennium ago and for a day every late April, home to a handful of the world’s most beautiful cars ever built.

I can feel the small white rocks through the thin Kevlar soles of my sneakers. If you focus your eyes to ground level, a honeycomb pattern emerges, cast by the grille of a red coupé. On this very spot two years ago stood another red coupé, designed by the same man, who is now showing me secret archways of aerodynamics. The car is, of course, Jason Castriota’s Stile Bertone Mantide and this is the Concorso d’Eleganza, a show to fry every brain even vaguely interested in cars.

Classic cars, you say? Then what is Castriota’s new concept, unveiled a week ago, doing here? The Concorso was first held in 1929, on the eve of the Great Depression, as a beauty contest—for the most beautiful new cars. It certainly is the perfect geological backdrop for automotive beauty, a stone’s throw from the villa where Anakin Skywalker wed Padmé Amidala, and this will be the very last Darth Vader reference in this blogpost. The Concorso soldiered on through the Depression until World War Two, then was briefly relaunched only to die a quick death and remain in a coma until BMW resurrected it ten years ago. It is now the premium event on the European concourse circuit.

There is a tendency among petrolheads to arrive at the cars of the 50s and the 60s as the most perfect embodiment of the automotive form. It certainly is easy to see why. Prior to World War Two, the car was a luxury good, clearly evidenced by the prewar cars which make up three classes of the Concorso. These are mostly huge, baroque battleships and visually, they have more to do with horse-driven carriages than with the vehicles we think of as cars. It is very pleasing to look at, say, a 1936 Auburn, but it would be more at home on the waters of Lake Como as a hydrofoil boat than on the public road.

Something happened during the production lull which was World War Two. The cars that emerged in the 50s were smaller, more human in scale, and much closer mechanically to modern cars. To look at a Ferrari 250 GT is to look at a fairly modern sports coupé.

There is a particular 250 GT on display, a Lusso, the last model in Ferrari’s labyrinthine first production model, and this car is chestnut brown and was owned by Steve McQueen. It is deeply beautiful and next to it stand a 250 GT SWB, a Lamborghini Miura, Paul Frère’s old Maserati, and so on. Most of these cars were closely related to motor racing, a pioneering and highly dangerous— therefore very cool—activity back then. They also happen to be really pretty.

But their prettyness stems not from the fact that they are old, au contraire, they are pretty because they were radically new for their day. The Miura was one of the first road cars to have its engine midships. The Ferrari 250 GT SWB was perhaps the best road racing car of its day. The Jaguar D-Type had disc brakes.

These were cars made by people who believed in progress.

This is why it’s wrong to treat them as anything other than fine museum pieces and why it’s so refreshing to see new concepts make up a separate class at the Concorso. Concepts which may be very abstract exercises in design, never making it into production, but concepts which may introduce new ideas. Like the many trick wings on the Bertone Mantide.

What is the point of it all? It’s hard to tell. There are people here who collect cars the way they collect wristwatches and vacation homes and then there are car geeks with mischievous twinkles in their eyes, people like you and I who happen to be wealthy enough to own an interesting old car and it is their cars which bear evidence to daily driving.

But make no mistake: this is a beauty contest. A day of fine escapism, and while there are new cars on display, the answer to the future of the automobile will not emerge from here. However space age the looks, the Corvette ZR1-based Mantide will not be an answer to a world running out of space and oil and filling with people who have never owned a car but would certainly like to do so.

Perhaps the best way to approach it is as a game. Dress up in a fine spring suit, grab a glass of champagne, and enjoy the Alpine sun as you walk around the mammoth sycamore by the hotel and lean in close to the leather straps which hold engine covers above triple Webers. Tomorrow will be another day. But if you lean in close enough, you can just about hear a racing V12 scream down the Mulsanne straight at Le Mans.

Just make sure you step back when the car’s owner guns the engine for real. These things are LOUD.

Next up, we’ll look at the more interesting cars of the Concorso in detail. Like this 1938 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B pictured above, which won this year’s Coppa d’Oro: the grand prize of the event.

Photo Credit: Natalie Polgar and the author

The 1980s were the halcyon days for World Rally Championship racing, and everybody from Ford to Rover seemed to have some high-strung homologation contender out there. Despite the competition, few rose to the challenge of the dominating Lancia Delta. By the early ‘90s, WRC fever had subsided somewhat due to rule changes by the FISA, and Lancia wound down the development of the original Delta with two final iterations- the Evoluzione I and II.

What we have here is an Evo II with only 40K showing on the clock. The seller doesn't say whether or not the car has its citizenship papers, and it's not wearing any license plates, so it may be up to you to make the car kosher with the Feds. As it's sitting in a dealership in Charlotte, let's give it the benefit of the doubt, and say you could just drive it off the lot without an immigration hearing. The good news is you'll be rocking a pretty exclusive, and entertaining ride. The bad news is you'll need to brush up on your lingua Italiana if you want to get a new . . . oh, damn-near anything.

And all this for only $26,500? Why, you'd spend that much on a Camry Hybrid. So, is the seller giving away the farm here, or is this just a Latin WRX?

You decide!

East Coast Motorsports or go here if the ad slides into the crowd.

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Like all great stories in motor racing, Mercedes’s dominating debut is a story of timing, innovation and resurgence, with a healthy sprinkling of treachery on top. It began on a November day in 1953.

It was at the conclusion of the fourth season of Formula One, a mere eight years after the war situation in Europe had developed not necessarily to Germany’s advantage. Dominated by Alberto Ascari in his tiny Ferrari 500, the young sport was about to go through its third major rule change in four years: the 1954 season would drop the Formula Two regulations in place for 1952 and 1953 and dictate a maximum displacement of 750 cc for supercharged engines and 2,500 cc for naturally aspirated ones.

Mercedes-Benz, on the heels of their successful victory with the 300SL Gullwing in the Carrera Panamericana, decided to enter Formula One. The old team which ruled the European Grand Prix Championship with the supercharged Silver Arrows was back. Team manager Alfred Neubauer—the man who invented pit signaling—returned with his hat, trenchcoat and stopwatches, while London-born technical director Rudolf Uhlenhaut was tasked with creating a new car from scratch, codenamed W196 R.

And what a car it turned out to be! The engine a straight-eight, fuel-injected, naturally aspirated 2.5-liter marvel, with power taken off at the middle of the crankshaft, running on a cocktail of benzol, methylene, gasoline, acetone and nitro. It was driven by desmodromic valves—only seen today on Ducati motorcycles—which enabled higher revs than allowed by 1950s springs. The whole assembly was canted 37º to the right to make for a lower hoodline and a smaller frontal area. The car was wrapped in sheets of Elektron, an ultralight and very flammable alloy of magnesium.

By the time Uhlenhaut’s team was done, the 1954 season was already underway, with Juan Manuel Fangio racking up wins in the brand-new Maserati 250F. But the lure of the new Mercedes proved too hard to resist for the Argentine, and after winning two of the season’s first three Grands Prix, Fangio swapped his Maserati for a seat in the W196. After a 15-year absence, the stage was set for Mercedes-Benz’s debut on July 4 at the French Grand Prix, held at the ultra-fast circuit of Reims-Gueux.

Tweaking and testing continued even after Fangio and teammate Karl Kling—who had taken a vulture through the windshield of his 300SL Gullwing two years before in Mexico at 130 MPH—secured the first two positions in qualifying. Fuel consumption was higher than expected, and in a wonderful move, technical director Uhlenhaut hopped in his own Gullwing and raced it all the way to team headquarters in Stuttgart to have expanded fuel tanks manufactured overnight for the W196’s. No vultures were encountered on the Autobahn and at 2:45 the next afternoon, off went Fangio and Kling to begin the 300-mile race.

It was a massacre. The streamlined cars outpaced the rest of the field by 4 seconds a lap. As Fangio took the checkered flag half a car length ahead of Kling, they were the only two cars on the leading lap. Two Maseratis, two Ferraris and a lone Gordini driven by Jean Behra limped in long after them, the rest of the field decimated in the grueling race.

Incidentally, it was on this very day that Germany’s national squad beat what was perhaps the greatest football team ever in the finals of the 1954 World Cup: the Hungarian Aranycsapat, stopped in its tracks after an unbroken string of 33 wins.

The W196 would go on to win 8 of the next 11 races it was entered in. The streamlined body was replaced with an open-wheel version for the more technical circuits, and a young Stirling Moss joined Fangio for the 1955 season.

Mercedes-Benz also entered the car in sports car racing as the 300SLR, with an engine bored out to 3 liters, producing 300 HP. This was the car that carried Stirling Moss to his famous victory in the Mille Miglia—and which, a few weeks later, got catapulted into the crowd at Le Mans, where it became all too clear just how flammable that Elektron chassis was. Over eighty people perished in the flames, including racing driver Pierre Levegh.

The accident spelled the end of the W196 and its brethren. Neubauer withdrew the 300SLR’s from the lead several hours after the accident. At the end of the season, with Fangio claiming the Formula One World Championship in the W196 and the team taking the World Sportscar Championship in the 300SLR, Mercedes-Benz withdrew completely from motor racing.

Fangio would become World Champion two more times. His victories came in cars he had defeated in his Mercedes: the Lancia-Ferrari D50, and for his final championship in 1957, the very Maserati 250F he had abandoned three years previously for the W196.

The 300SLR lived on as Rudolf Uhlenhaut’s daily driver. It was made into a street-legal coupé which Uhlenhaut commuted to work with.

A hyper-Gullwing, capable of reaching speeds of 180 MPH in a sad, gray, post-war Europe, blasting down empty highways at warp speed, forever chasing a racetrack it would never set wheels on again.

On the other hand, it must have made for a memorable childhood for Uhlenhaut’s son Roger:

Photo Credit: Daimler AG, Autocar

We've asked our very own Jalopnik commenter Graverobber to help us out with bringing everyone's favorite choose-your-own-imaginary-destiny-by-way-of-polldaddy-poll feature back to Jalopnik. Let us know what you think in the comments below. —Ed.

You say you want history? You say you want Zagato coachwork? How about triple Webers on a sweet V6? Well then step right up and take a gander at this mostly original 1962 Lancia Flaminia 2.5 3C with Zagato bodywork. The 3C indicates the triple two-barrel Weber induction, which bumped the horsepower by 21 over the single Solex engine. The seller claims that the car spent 12 years in storage in Switzerland, so it should at least come with a trunk full of chocolate. Maybe not, but you can still enjoy the Rubenesque form and double bubble roof line, none the less.

As one of only 152 produced, and with an impeccable lineage, there's no doubt about this car's desirability, but the question remains: is it worth $210,000? Two hundred and ten thousand? That's enough to keep GM afloat an additional 13 minutes. Or, you could buy a giant white truffle — if you were so inclined.

So, what'll it be- a possible future invitation to the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, or your own personal giant white truffle?

You decide!

[Hemmings Motor News]

First, we should all thank Scroggzilla for unearthing these videos of a vintage Castrol documentary for us (and Targa-Florio.net for providing the photograph above). The Targa Florio was an endurance race held in the mountains of Sicily; starting in 1906, it was finally discontinued in 1977 for safety reasons. Yes, even by the insanely loose (and relatively lawsuit-free) standards of European road racing, the Targa Florio was considered too dangerous to continue. We've got the whole lineup of worship-deserving machinery here, including MGs, Austin-Healeys, Alfas, Porsches, and- of course- Ferraris.

The Zagato-bodied Lancia Fulvia Sport was a high-strung, V4-powered, front-wheel-drive, aluminum-bodied screamer, similar under the skin to the Alameda DOTS Berlina. Here's what JSmith53 has to say about his find:

Saw this badboy when passing through the little town of Weston, WV. I had never seen one of these before today. Thought I'd share this with the most awesomest car guys I know. In the last picture, you can see it is parked next to a set of tall doors, one of which was open. Inside there was an 80's model Jaguar XJ, and several (10+) cars covered with blankets. I resisted the urge to peek inside. Parked two or three spaces in front of the Lancia was a Series 3 Alfa Spyder in mint condition, and beside that, parked off the street, was an Alfa 164, also in mint condition. I imagine there was a lot of Italian machinery parked inside, covered by the blankets. I apologize for the small number and low quality of these photos, as I was a stranger in a small town and that made me nervous. After I drove off I kicked myself for not taking more photographs. The interior looked as good as the exterior.

Back in high school and middle school the wedgie (or as we called it, the wedge) was something you most certainly didn't want, under any circumstance and you definitely didn't appreciate it when it came along. But in car design, the wedge is something you can appreciate.

The beautiful and technical shape was used by many of the top design houses of the seventies and was a signal the future had officially arrived. While not the most aerodynamic form in practice, it certainly looked the part and helped usher in a new era of automotive design. Italian design houses ItalDesign, Bertone and Pininfarina were at the forefront of the movement, but the Japanese, Germans and the U.S. jumped on the bandwagon shortly thereafter

10) 1972 Lotus Esprit M70

First displayed at the Turin Motor Show in 1972, the Lotus Esprit M70 was designed by Giugiaro at Ital Design and was built on a widened and lengthened Europa chassis. After positive reviews from the public Colin Chapman decided to put the Esprit into production. The final design was completed in 1973 with many of the concept cues intact and when the then GM owned Lotus decided to build Peter Stevens redesign in 1987, many of those original cues remained.

Fun fact: that you couldn't call yourself a car guy without knowing already: Roger Moore drove a submersible version in the 1977 James Bond movie, The Spy Who Loved Me.

9) 1989 Vector W8

In 1989, after nearly two decades of development, Gerald Wiegert revealed his Vector W8 to the public. Extensive use of aeronautical building techniques were to be W8s selling point, but shoddy quality and a lack of funding eventually brought down the U.S.-built Lamborghini competitor in the mid-nineties. The W8 drew its inspiration from the 1968 Alfa Romeo Carabo and many other wedge cars in our list and is still a beautiful car today and you can pick up one of the few examples for a steal; nearly 20 percent of the original $685,000 asking price.

Fun fact: The Vector W8 was featured briefly in the 1993 movie, Rising Sun.

8) 1972 E25 BMW Turbo

The E25 BMW Turbo was initially built to celebrate the upcoming 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, but was later used as the inspiration for the M1, 8-Series, Z1 and the new M1 Homage concept. BMW built the Turbo concept as a rolling display for new safety and engineering technologies as well as showing that BMW had officially left the difficult 60's behind. Penned by BMW's French head of design, Paul Bracq, the Turbo concept was styled after the most dramatic Italian supercars of the day and featured an advanced radar system that warned the driver of close objects such as curbs and cars.

Fun fact: The Turbo featured two BMW badges on the rear – symbolizing BMW's exceptional quality – a cue that made it onto the production M1 and M1 Homage concept.

7) 1978 Dome Zero

Dome was and still is a race car manufacturer in Japan and in 1978 they gave the world the Dome Zero concept at the Geneva Motor Show. Intended to show Dome's intention of building a homologation special for a new line of sportscars; it was unable to pass Japanese homologation. In 1979, Dome debuted a revised Zero, dubbed the P2, with U.S. market bumpers and safety equipment added to the design. In the same year, a racing effort was launched at Le Mans but the ‘Zero RL' failed to finish the race. Shortly after, investors pulled their funds and the Dome Zero was officially dead.

Fun fact: The Dome Zero was featured in Gran Turismo 4, Auto Modellista on the PS2 and Sega GT on the XBOX.

6) 1970 Lancia Stratos Zero

At the 1970 Turin Motor Show, Bertone showed off a styling exercise called the Lancia Stratos Zero. The Lancia Stratos HF roadcar was based very loosely off of this concept though the similarities are few and far between. The futuristic Zero stood 838mm tall and was so low that conventional doors could not be used and to gain access, drivers would have to raise the windshield and walk into the car.

Fun fact: The Stratos Zero appeared in Michael Jackson's 1988 film, Moonwalker.

5) 1972 Maserati Boomerang

In 1971 the Maserati Boomerang was shown at the Turin Motor Show as a mockup and then in 1972 the Geneva Motor Show saw the debut of the fully realized Maserati Boomerang concept. It sat next to the Lotus Esprit M70 as both were designed by Giugiaro at ItalDesign. At 1070mm high, it's not the shortest wedge in the list, but it did have a 15 degree windshield rake – the steepest rake you could achieve while maintaining visibility, albeit very little. ItalDesign used the Boomerang as inspiration when designing the DMC Delorean (most noticeable in the rear view) in the eighties.

Fun fact: Intended as a showcar, the Boomerang was registered as a roadcar and was actually sold in 1974 to a private collector which brings us to 2005 when it was auctioned at Christie's for a cool $1,000,000.

4) 1969 Holden Hurricane RD001

The Holden Hurricane was an experimental concept built in 1969 and was the first product of the GM Holden Research and Development group. The Hurricane's ultra low 990mm stance would have made ingress and egress difficult with traditional doors, so an electro-mechanical powered canopy was used and swung forward over the front wheels. Also included were power elevated seats that both rose up and out of the way along with the steering column to make exiting the Hurricane easier. When climbing into the car the seats would lower to a semi-reclined position and the roof would close overhead.

Fun fact: A similar canopy design was used on both the Saab Aero X and the Batmobile from the Tim Burton Batman movies.

3) 1970 Ferrari PF Modulo

Painted black for the 1970 Geneva Motor Show and then re-sprayed white for its debut at the 1970 Turin Motor Show; the Paulo Martin penned Pininfarina-Ferrari Modulo concept gained quite a reputation and won numerous international design awards – 22 of them – for a car that almost wasn't produced. The cars release was held for over a year because of an apprehensive Sergio Pininfarina. Developed using the Ferrari 512-S racer as a basis, the 935mm high PF Modulo was built to explore new construction technologies and to show off the raw passion of the Italian design house.

Fun fact: Paulo Martin was sketching a Rolls-Royce Camargue dashboard when the idea struck him to make the first sketch of the Modulo. You could say he was more than a little bored with the Rolls.

2) 1971 Lamborghini Countach

Designed by Gandini for Bertone in 1971, the original Lamborghini Countach concept was the most pure version the public would ever see of this car. The wild scissor doors were first seen on another car in our list (the Alfa Romeo Carabo concept) and were used primarily because of the extremely wide chassis, but we think the real reason is because Gandini knew every rice boy would want them on their econo-hatch some day. The Countach name was derived from the dialect of the Piedmont region in northern Italy, literally meaning astonishment and amazement. The pure design of the concept translated loosely into the production LP400 though it was short lived when splitters, wings and U.S. bumper requirements were added to the mix in the LP400S, LP500 and QV models.

Fun fact: The Countach was featured in the 1981 movie, The Cannonball Run, and is one of the most replicated cars to date.

1) 1968 Alfa Romeo Carabo

The 1968 Alfa Romeo Carabo is the most significant wedge car and paved the way for many of the cars on this list. Designed by Marcello Gandini of Bertone fame, it was revealed at Porte de Versailles in Paris in 1968 to an absolutely stunned crowd. The Lamborghini Countach concept that arrived 3 years later drew inspiration from the Carabo in its wedge form, wheel house openings and its notoriously cool scissor-doors, though the Countach wasn't the only car that took inspiration from the Carabo. You can see inspired cues from many sports cars and supercars like the Diablo, 4th gen Camaro and Vector. Vector took the inspiration quite literally by duplicating many of the shapes of the front and side profile in its W8. Many wealthy individuals tried to purchase the Carabo including an Arab prince or two, but thankfully Bertone decided to hold on to it and now the Carabo spends its days relaxing inside the Alfa Romeo museum in Arese, Italy.

Fun fact: The unique name "Carabo" and its green paint were derived from the small green beetle, Carabus Olympiae.

Honorable Mentions

Narrowing down our search for the top ten wedge cars was difficult and we couldn't let this list pass without mention of a few other notable wedges. The DMC DeLorean was the hardest to leave off the list based on its cult follow from the Back to the Future films. Another difficult car to omit was the popular Triumph TR7/TR8 which was produced from 1974 to 1981. In the gallery below you'll find the rest of the cars that we thought were worth mentioning. Enjoy!

[via Lotus Esprit Turbo]

[WalletPop] Hat tip to Dante!

With UDMan's '63 Corvair raising the Index Of Effluency stakes for next year's New England 24 Hours Of LeMons, anyone who shows up with the same ol' snoozeworthy RX-7 or Camaro will be the object of well-deserved ridicule by his or her peers. You need to limp roar onto the track in a car manufactured by one of the Big Three PCH Superpowers, and we've managed to find one that already has a roll cage! In fact, this '68 Austin Healey Sprite is a proven racing champion, having taken the SCCA Grand National Solo II Class DP trophy in 1978! Since that time, well, there's been near-total a certain amount of deterioration, but who the heck cares about non-structural rust damage in a race car? Of course, there is certainly might be some structural damage as well, but you'll get to fixing that… right after you figure out how to get a new engine installed with the $1 in budget flexibility you'll have after spending $499 on this car. There must be something you can sell off this hulk racer; if nothing else, you can sell off the transmission and use the $75 to buy a basket-case donor car with some sort of functioning engine/trans combo. Thanks to Evil Genius for the tip!

Since the rollcage doesn't count against the $500 LeMons price ceiling, why pay for a car that already has one? Instead, go for a mid-engined Italian machine, and we don't mean some cheapo Fiat X1/9 here. You can kick it up a notch and send your opponents staggering back with a mixture of pity fear and confusion dread when you drag drive this 1976 Lancia Scorpion off the trailer before the race. It's got some accident damage, but so what? You're not racing to look pretty, you're racing to spend an entire weekend turning wrenches and cursing in Italian win! Does it run? Is the Pope Italian? Hey, that Fiat Twin Cam engine is just months minutes away from firing up, you'll see!

Remember the Lancia Zagato? Of course not, and you Europeans are probably totally confused about that name slapped on what's obviously some kind of Americanized Beta, but enough of them were sold on these shores that it's now possible to obtain two of them (go here if the ad disappears) for just $1,500. One of them doesn't run, due to a "sticky" clutch arm, while the other one runs just fine, other than a slight problem with the fuel pump ("Sometimes you have to jiggle the fuel pump fuse to get it going"), which shouldn't raise even the tiniest red flag among those with experience working on Italian cars. You got lots of extra parts- in fact, sufficient parts to completely fill the bed of a full-sized pickup truck- and that means you should have enough stuff to get at least one of these fine Italian thoroughbreds back into tip-top shape. Right?

Just because a Citroën SM has never lost a PCH Superpower Challenge, does that make this matchup unfair to Italy? What if the Romans had had that sort of defeatist attitude? Why, they would have allowed those barbarians from the north to conquer them in that case... oh, wait. Anyway, we figure two Lancias might have a hope against a car built by a shotgun marriage of Maserati and Citroën, under the administration of two of the best-organized and efficient organizations the world has ever seen: the French and Italian governments! So here we go! My fellow LeMons judge, Herr Lieberman, has found this 1973 Citroën SM for us, and check out that price! Pick your jaw up off the floor, because we're talking about an SM priced well below four figures, and the auction ends in just a few hours. Unless the reserve is set at some absurd height, this might be the cheapest SM in the country! It doesn't quite run, but it's really, really close; once you deal with the engine- which "may be stuck"- and find a new transmission- which is missing- and then hunt down some new hydropneumatic suspension spheres and some other parts, and then deal with all the stuff that goes wrong when an insanely complicated car sits for close to two decades (a car built by the French and Italian governments, remember), and then fix the rusted-through body panels… well, at that point you'll find that you're only capable of composing really unwieldy run-on sentences full of digressions and tangents and you'll need a good stiff shot of absinthe just to drag yourself out to the garage and face your future, each day, until the warm embrace of eagerly anticipated death enfolds you. OK, fine, we know the SM is going to crush the Zagatos, but vote anyway.

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When you want to drive a car that was once owned by a famous actor, you can expect to pay big bucks, and when the car is a vintage Italian machine with suicide doors? Forget it! Hold on, though, because we work miracles here at Project Car Hell… and we can put you behind the wheel of this 1960 Lancia Appia (sorry, the ad got pulled from Craigslist, so we have to use a screenshot), which was once owned by Fabio! You think some of Mr. Bodice Ripper's charismatic glow will rub off on you from this car? Sure thing! Of course, before that can happen, you'll need to get it running. The seller doesn't mention the running condition (or lack thereof) in the description, but "needs restoration" is generally accepted as Craigslist-ese for "nothing works." Don't worry about finding parts for your new Lancia, however, because the seller claims "Car is complete and no missing parts." Easy!

Maybe Fabio is a little too wholesome for you, what with his romance-novel faux-bad-boy image and all, and you want your famous car to be something notorious. You ain't getting Bonnie and Clyde's Ford V8, but how about a car that figured as the centerpiece in a squalid B-list divorce nightmare, culminating in allegations of abduction and rape and- naturally- leading to the publication of a documentary, a book, and a reality TV show? That's what you get with the Star Crazy Volvo 244, which figured prominently in Pauley Perrette's legal battles with- we ain't making this up- Coyote Shivers. You'll need to go to this site to get Mr. Shivers' side of the story, or you could just watch his statement below:



It's pretty much a run-of-the-mill '84 Volvo 244, with no mention of running condition or anything else, but it's priced at just 400 bucks with no reserve. Are you thinking 24 Hours Of LeMons V8 Volvo? You should be!

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Lancia Ypsilon VERSUS will be introduced at the 2008 International Paris Motor Show

It will be introduced at the 2008 International Paris Motor Show, a Lancia Ypsilon VERSUS show car produced with the Versace Group brand that will also dress the models on the stand with garments chosen to suit the expressive motifs of the exhibition space. All this confirms the strong bond between Lancia and the world of Fashion. Together with Design and Cinema, Fashion is one of the brand's languages of reference, as is borne out by the choice of Lancia cars as official vehicles for the Milan fashion week.

The Lancia Ypsilon continues to cause a stir, confirming its place as a true icon of Italian design. This time, it is the turn of the ‘Ypsilon VERSUS’, an original version created as a result of collaboration between Lancia and Versus, a Versace Group brand that has always been a byword for exquisite styling innovation. With its pronounced tendency for a young, dynamic style, Versus reflects the taste of an audience that is very aware of fashion trends and full of vitality. Attention to detail, care over proportions and top-quality workmanship and materials are the strengths of the brand collections. So it seemed quite natural to combine the VERSUS brand with Ypsilon, the Lancia model directed at the same young and sophisticated audience.
The show car is the forerunner of a special series that will be produced in a limited edition (500 cars) and marketed from March 2009. The car confirms Lancia’s interest in the world of fashion. Despite the apparent differences between motoring and fashion, the two worlds actually share important qualities such as talent, creativity and innovation. The winning ingredients of world-renowned Italian style, in other words.

The ‘Ypsilon Versus show car’ features certain exterior features of great visual impact. Beginning with the special Bronzino Bronze body colour that bears a screen-printed ‘Versus’ logo on the roof. The exterior also boasts bronze 16" alloy rims. The original bronze chrome finish is also repeated on the grille, handles, moulding on the doors and rear bumpers and tailgate handle, sporting the Versus logo.

The same strong personality is evident inside, as borne out by special upholstery produced with a band in a cloth that recalls the world of fashion – and a central area in brown leather with a ‘Versus’ logo heat-printed in relief, just as on the accessories produced by the fashion brand.

The same craftsmanship has been lavished on the pearl-effect leather of the head restraint, adorned with an embossed VERSUS logo, on the dashboard and on the door panels. Everything has been made even more elegant and exclusive by detailing on the instrument panel, sill plate and gearbox that also have the same bronze chrome finish as the exterior features.

When a car ad leads off with the statement "This is another car that I have exhumed from my graveyard," you know you're in for a real treat. Better install some good air-conditioning in your garage, because it'll get mighty hot in there once you drag this '76 Lancia Scorpion inside! You Yurpeans might know this car as the Montecarlo, but don't let the similarity fool you- the US version had 81 horsepower instead of 120, because Yurp decided it would be better to allow asthmatic children to die horrible hydrocarbon-enhanced deaths than to strangle car engines with emission control hardware during the Malaise Era. Naturally, that means you'll need to do something about the 1756cc engine currently in this car, but it's probably a boat anchor by now, anyway, as the car "has been sitting out in the weeds and weather for many years" and probably wasn't running when placed in its weedy home. We suggest installing a supercharged Toyota 4A-GZE out of an MR2, which should be a no-sweat swap... right? You know it! The seller claims it's a parts car, but we know you'll be able to bring it back to life in a couple of weekends.

So the Toledo 24 Hours of LeMons race is coming up and you still don't have a car? How about a Merkur XR4Ti, such as the one the confusingly-named Team Flying Hyundai drove in the Altamont race? Come on now, you might whine, nobody really sells an XR4Ti that cheap! Au contraire, my skeptical Midwestern wannabe-racer friend! Just take a look at this '89 Merkur XR4Ti, which has a price tag of just 600 bucks and actually runs! Well, to be honest, the statement "Runs and drives, but needs work" generally means "it makes noise when you turn the key," but that's better than a car that doesn't do anything. It's priced $100 over the 24 Hours of LeMons limit, but we suspect the price is negotiable (besides, if I can sell $280 worth of parts from a $100 Volvo, you should be able to squeeze a measly C-note out of a Merkur). Many, many problems bedevil the electrical accessories, but all you'll need to do is tear out everything a race car won't need and then pray that you can still get the engine computer to work. Thanks to SundaySunday for the tip!

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You want to get into some serious GT Touring action at the next vintage racing event in your area? Good thinking! Of course, you'll need to roll up in some Italian steel, and said steel needs to be incredibly rare if you're going to make the right impression. Say, this 1960 Lancia Flaminia, which is "in an advanced phase of restoration" (what are you going to believe, the photograph of a total beat-to-shit basket case diamond in the rough or the seller's description?) and which once "belonged to an elderly man." Powered by a 2.5 liter V6 (before the V6 design was fashionable), the Lancia Flaminia was stylish, fast, and built in dauntingly small numbers. It's just £12,500 (plus shipping costs from the UK), and you get "complete front end and rear end extra" (whatever that means). Don't be intimidated by the fact that you'll need to hire machinists and fabricators to make the smallest missing component from scratch for this project, because it will all be worth it when you're out there on the track with that V6 roaring!

You'd have fun with a big Italian machine, all right, but how would you cope with the envy you'd have for the guys in the high-strung little British cars? We've got the solution! Just get on the horn and call "Vladimir," a man so trustworthy his name must be surrounded by a bodyguard of quote marks, and tell him you'll pay whatever it takes to buy this 1964 Lotus Elan (go here if the ad disappears). Check out that twin-cam Cosworth-ized Lotus-Ford engine! You know it's going to be the best-sounding thing you've ever heard! Oh, and don't fret about the ominous statement "while waiting for his destiny to improve,
the owner has become too old to finish this profect," because you'll manage to get this project done before you, too, wake up one morning and realize you've spent 45 years and the thing still isn't done. It's got a limited-slip differential, some expensive-sounding suspension bits, and some (mercifully unspecified) work remaining to do before you can go out and blow away some Ferraris. Come on, how hard could it be? Slam-dunk project, for sure!

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