Forty but holding its age well, this month marks a milestone birthday for the Lancia Stratos, launched at the Turin Motor Show in November 1971.
Destined to be the greatest rally car of the decade and one of the coolest road cars ever made, the Stratos HF had evolved from
a 1970 Bertone-designed concept called Stratos Zero - an outrageous, angular creation that lent its name and mid-engined configuration, but not its styling, to the 1971 production car.
Even by the standards of the supercar-obsessed 70s, the Stratos was an outlandish sight. The wheelbase was extremely short, the cabin incredibly narrow with a cockpit-style, wrap-around windscreen that offered virtually no rear visibility.
World rallying rules at the time stipulated 500 examples of a car had to be built to make it eligible for competition - a law designed to discourage carmakers from designing cars specifically for rallying. That didn't work with Lancia. The Stratos was unashamedly created with top-level rallying in mind and the Italian maker was more than happy to create 500 of the things to make it happen.
A total of 492 were eventually built (the rules changed to 400 cars along the way) and the Stratos won the World Rally Championship in 1974 (the first year it was fully homologated), 1975 and 1976. Fiat's rallying efforts were focused on other models such as the Abarth 131 in the late 70s, but the Stratos continued to be a successful competition car for years afterwards and was a popular privateer choice.
