the special relationship between Battista Farina and Vincenzo Lancia began in the 1920’s but saw its ultimate expression a quarter of a century later
Franco Martinengo, who ran Pinin Farina’s styling studio, used to say that looking at a B24 Spider was not enough; you wanted to touch it. Concours judges, who are not allowed to, have been suffering ever since.
Martinengo was hardly a neutral witness. The Spider came out of his studio. It was also the last flowering of a friendship between two Turin families that had lasted a quarter of a century.
That friendship began, as many good Italian stories do, with money and a favour. In 1930 Battista Farina, known to everyone as Pinin, left his elder brother’s coachworks to set up on his own. Part of the capital came from his wife’s aunt. Part came from Vincenzo Lancia, who took a minority stake. Few shareholdings have paid a more handsome dividend.
Vincenzo died in 1937 and never saw the Aurelia. The firm passed to his widow and, after the war, to their son Gianni. He took charge in his mid-twenties with the serene confidence of a man nobody had told that some things cost too much. Under Gianni came the Aurelia, the first car to put a V6 into series production; the engine was largely the work of Francesco De Virgilio, under the eye of Vittorio Jano. He also launched a racing programme so ambitious that it would, in time, cost the family the company.
By 1954 Gianni wanted an open Aurelia, with at least one eye on America. Pinin Farina’s studio took the running gear of the B20 coupé, removed some 200mm from the wheelbase and went to work. Martinengo led whilst Francesco Salomone was among those at the drawing boards, along with a young Aldo Brovarone, who would later draw the Dino. From Detroit they borrowed the wraparound windscreen. The split bumpers they borrowed from nobody, though Ronald ’Steady’ Barker likened them to Salvador Dalí’s moustache. No external handle interrupts the flank; instead you reach inside the door for a plaited leather strap. The hood folds out of sight behind the seats, as if faintly embarrassed to be needed at all.
The care continues once you step over the tall sill. The steering wheel is large, with a slender wooden rim on aluminium spokes, which suits steering that is surprisingly light and high-geared. The painted dashboard is pleasingly free of the haphazard switchgear that afflicts so many cars of the period. You press the key rather than turn it, a small piece of theatre, and the V6 settles into a deep, throbbing tickover. With the gearbox living at the back in unit with the differential, the floor is uncluttered and the weight evenly shared. Add the de Dion rear suspension and the car sweeps from one corner to the next without fuss. Push the needle into the upper half of the rev counter and the power keeps building as the exhaust hardens. Barker suspected Lancia of employing retired canaries from La Scala to tune the pipes. The men who made the Spider voted for it with their own garages. Gianni Lancia and Pinin Farina are both said to have kept one for themselves, Farina’s reportedly wearing a pale blue hardtop.
Picture Brussels in January 1955. Outside, a Belgian winter is doing what Belgian winters do. Inside the Salon, a low open Lancia sits under the lights, its curved screen catching every lamp in the hall. Visitors in heavy overcoats stoop to look into the cockpit, straighten up, and stoop again. A salesman reassures somebody that the car does have a hood, somewhere. The name on the nose still belongs to the family on the share register, and nobody on the stand could know how quickly that will change. In May, Lancia works driver Alberto Ascari is killed whilst unofficially testing a Ferrari at Monza. By summer, the Lancia family have agreed to sell to the cement magnate Carlo Pesenti. On 26 July the D50 Grand Prix cars are formally handed over to Ferrari in Turin, and Jano follows them to Maranello. The Spider, conceived in the family’s last confident season, turns out to be one of the final things they left behind.
B24 1057 was completed the day before the racing cars left: 25 July 1955. It was one of only 59 or so Spiders built with right-hand drive and, according to its Lancia Classiche certificate, one of three of those finished in black. It was registered in Britain that August. In nearly fifty years it has had just two custodians. The first was Brian Collins, an engineer of the old school and a noted Lancia restorer. Following his rebuild the car was driven across Bodmin Moor by ‘Steady’ Barker for Supercar Classics in the winter of 1985, in the rain, which is the most English thing ever to happen to an Italian sports car. It has since been returned to the black in which it left Turin.
Martinengo was right, and we see no reason why you should suffer like a concours judge. B24 1057 is now on offer from Brian Classic & Co., and we would be delighted to show it to you.
