Picture Car Confidential #14: What Led Me to Lancia

It helps to know this about me: I was the sort of kid who loved all the world’s cars. Beyond the amazing American machines of the mid-1960s, which I followed closely and with a fair bit of enthusiasm, I was particularly jazzed on the imported models of the day. Growing up just across the Hudson River from New York City in Leonia, New Jersey, afforded me an extended stay during my formative years in what you might call “foreign car country.”

Sure, California had come into its own by then, but at the same time, many European manufacturers had also left the cramped Manhattan beachheads from which they’d launched their assaults on the American market in the 1950s—or taken their feeble potshots, as the case may be—and headed for the verdant shores of nearby northern New Jersey. More than many others, I was a beneficiary of a real estate trend in the form of corporate suburbanization. (Or victim, depending on who’s telling the story.)

For one thing, I could ride my bike to the headquarters of Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, Citroën, Renault, Peugeot, Ferrari, Volkswagen, Audi, Alfa Romeo, and BMC and inspect the often intriguing, sometimes beguiling wares in their parking lots. Later, the newly formed British Leyland moved to my little town, boosting the local economy and making snooping extra easy. Along with the other school kids on the playground, I’d see all the BL employees headed for lunch every day in their Spitfires, Midgets, and Austin Americas. No wonder I was confused. 

BL’s predecessor, BMC, had resided three towns over in Ridgefield, New Jersey. Mrs. O’Grady, a grandmotherly neighbor who babysat me and my sisters, worked there and brought me Austin Healey 3000 and MG Midget brochures. The 1965 Midget I have looks just like the one in a now long-gone brochure, while the big Healey I once owned is just long gone.

Such sightings and literature helped warp my view of the automotive world. But thanks to some other key influences, I was predisposed to warping. British TV shows (The Avengers, The Saint, The Prisoner) and movies (Beatles, To Sir With Love) left their mark, along with the frequently updated catalogs of die-cast model-car makers of Corgi and Dinky, whose realistic, 1/43^rd scale models of all the world’s cars resonated deeply. Too soon, however, Dinky, a British company, withdrew from the U.S. market. I continue to blame the advent of Hot Wheels.

At the age of 11, I intuitively realized that these cheap, shiny things from far away presented a mortal threat to that which I held dearest: more realistic and detailed models in a proper, larger scale. I could, however, see other kids were going in a big way for these baubles that could be bought with pocket change and sped down a plastic track without crashing immediately. (Not something you could honestly say about the Aurora HO cars I also fancied.) I understood the appeal clearly enough, but I viewed Hot Wheels (and Corgi’s lame-o response, “Whizz Wheels”) at the time as the first step in an unfolding tragedy, one which prepared me, it turned out, for the death of my beloved MG and most of the rest of the British motor industry. 

Undaunted, long before I had a driver’s license, I was purchasing Dinky cars by mail from the U.K., while my discovery that the firm had a separate French factory with a lineup never seen in America had me dispatching frantic letters of inquiry to Paris department stores. Closer to home, trips to Polk’s Hobby Store on West 45^thSt., with its wondrous model railroading section, plastic kits and obscure die-cast automotive delights also fired the youthful imagination, never so much as on those rare occasions where I could persuade my parental bosses to take me there with a little budgetary support.

But then came what seems in retrospect the inevitable next step. Not far from Polk’s was a large, out-of-town newsstand in Times Square. My father would take me sometimes. In this way, I became the first 11-year-old Leonian to buy a copy of England’s Autocar and read it cover to cover. When I turned 12, as a gift for my birthday and every other holiday of the year, I successfully requested a one-year subscription to the weekly magazine, immersing myself for the first of many years to come in a world of Ford Escorts, Triumph Dolomite Sprints, and Bond Bugs. 

Raging debates about the Austin Allegro and its square-ish, so-called Quartic steering wheel played out in the back of my head, while European cars we didn’t see in the U.S. were more fully revealed to me than they were in the pages of my local guide to the international scene, Road & Track. In this way, I became conversant with Skodas and Talbots, Innocentis and Hillmans, Fiat 130s, Peugeot 305s, Renault 30s, and hundreds more cars few Americans had ever heard of. And that’s not to mention the peculiarities of Britain’s automotive caste system, where the status of employes working for the same company might be reflected in whether they were given a Cortina of 1.3, 1.5, 1.6 or 2.0 liters to drive, their company car’s displacement chosen by their employer who then presumably expected them to practice gratitude, no matter how lowly the spec.

It was from reading English mags—I’d snag the occasional copy of Motor Sport and CAR, too—that I also learned about other appealing machines. Like the Riley Kestrel 12/4 Sprite, a 1936 example of which I own today. Or, from the Continent, Italy’s Lancias.

Today I view Lancia as one of—if not the—greatest marques of all time. But it was barely on my radar until I started seeing Fulvia coupes, often in rally guise, in the magazines from across the sea. (A Fulvia Sport Zagato—a less good-looking, slightly zany variant that turned up in the Corgi lineup—being my only previous sighting.) Always the shallow one, I thought factory Fulvia coupes (and Kestrels) looked great and that was enough to pre-sell me on the Fulvia, but it would be 1995 before I bought my first.

The seller was Harry Reynolds, a one-time Firestone engineer and vintage racer, who also taught at Skip Barber and instructed me during a driving school I took for Automobile Magazine. The owner/operator of a 500cc Kieft F3 racing car, a great teacher, and a hilarious guy, Reynolds got sent home from work one day in the 1960s when he showed up at Firestone with his then-current Lancia riding on Michelin radials. The company did not approve, a kneejerk reaction that likely presaged, no thanks to Harry, the disastrous recall about ten years later of 14-plus million of the tiremaker’s first radial offering, the under-developed Firestone 500.

A couple years following our trackside introduction, I visited Reynolds down in Sarasota, Florida, where he’d retired and passed time sitting alongside a manmade catfish pond by his house, often with a beer in hand and several more waiting in an ice bucket nearby. It was like a Corona TV ad, albeit with bottles of Rolling Rock and a pond standing in for the Caribbean beach. As an amusing additional diversion, one could feed the hefty catfish dried cat chow in his small but deep pond and watch them leap up out of the water like acrobatic outfielders to catch dinner mid-air. After a couple of beers, I found it mesmerizing.

But not as mesmerized as I was when Harry showed me a 1966 Fulvia coupe sitting in his driveway. He invited me to drive this first series example (with its original, 1.2-liter V-4 engine) up and down his very long driveway, on account of its lacking not only registration but also some glass and trim as it was being prepared for paint. I was instantly smitten. Small engine notwithstanding, it was spritely, with controls impossibly delicate yet elegantly positive. It was characterful, charming and exquisitely engineered. Doors shut with authority. And, to my eyes, it was beautiful. I had to have it. 

Harry was adamant he didn’t want to sell, but he invited me to stay in touch. So, I sent a good-natured postcard every six months for about five years until one day I got a return communication. You can have the Fulvia, (still unpainted, glass still uninstalled) if you also take my 1970 Chevrolet Suburban as a tow car, he said. $5000, all in. I took him up on his offer before he could change his mind and flew to Florida. Renting a towbar from U-Haul, we set out for New York, with my friend, Jim Travers, along for moral and driving support. Back home, I ultimately found Domenico Spadaro, a Lancia guru and proprietor of Domenick’s European Car in White Plains, New York. With help from his two sons, Frank and Santo, who run the shop through the present day with their sister, Venera, they brought the Fulvia back to life and kept it there.

The joy that Fulvia brought my car brain led me to learn about Aurelias and Lambdas and Flavias. Appias, Flaminias, Ardeas, and Aprillias. These Lancias were all great—arguably too good where profitability was concerned—and Lancia careered through the 20th century, almost going bust on several occasions, in between technical breakthroughs and two bankruptcies. The second big business failure arrived in 1969 when Lancia was bought by Fiat, only to return to the U.S. market for a brief stop in the mid-1970s with its Beta models. 

They were aptly named, it transpired, as beta-testing owners learned that their cars would also be testing their own patience and their favorites car writers’ vocabularies as they collectively sought words to denigrate models that, despite their considerable technical interest, led the premier league in rust, parts unavailability, and a host of smog-choked mechanical shortcomings. 

While already familiar with Betas from their earlier European launches, I liked them. But I’ve never owned one. Today the marque is especially alone among the many lost Stellantis-owned brands, with a one-model-sold-only-in-Italy strategy that likely owes its existence to it being more expensive to shutter than to slowly starve the brand. And to think if I hadn’t grown up where I did and read what I did as a child, I might not even care about Lancia’s extended stay in automobiledom’s great and increasingly crowded departure lounge.

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A man of many pursuits (rock band manager, automotive journalist, concours judge, purveyor of picture cars for film and TV), Jamie Kitman lives and breathes vintage machines. His curious taste for interesting, oddball, and under-appreciated classics—which traffic through his Nyack, New York warehouse—promises us an unending stream of delightful cars to discuss. For more Picture Car Confidential columns, click here. Follow Jamie Kitman on Instagram at @commodorehornblow; follow Octane Film Cars @octanefilmcars and at www.octanefilmcars.com.