Jay Leno has plenty of Italian supercars in his collection, but he’d never driven a Lancia Stratos. Until this 1975 Stratos HF (short for “High Fidelity”) rolled into his garage, that is.
Inspired by a 1970 Bertone concept car, the Stratos was the first purpose-built rally car, kicking off an era of innovation and one-upmanship that hasn’t been seen since. The Stratos remains one of the most successful rally cars in history, with 18 World Rally Championship (WRC) victories. It raced in the WRC from 1974 to 1981, when it was replaced by the Lancia 037 Group B car.
As with other WRC cars, Lancia had to build a certain number of road-going versions to homologate the Stratos for competition. But where most rally cars before and since were based on ordinary sedans and hatchbacks, the Stratos was a bespoke two-seat, mid-engine affair.
Lancia built 492 road cars for homologation, according to Leno. The car featured here is one of them, despite the decals and rally lights. It’s powered by a Ferrari-sourced 2.4-liter V-6 that makes 190 hp in road-car spec.
Notable quirks of the Stratos include ledges in the doors to hold helmets, a slide mechanism for the windows in place of winders, and a very short wheelbase that helped increase agility for rally stages, but also makes the car a bit twitchy on the street, according to Leno. Based on his reactions to driving the Stratos, he didn’t seem to mind.
The car featured here belonged to the late John Campion, a car collector with a fondness for Lancias, and is now owned by Stratas Auctions. Lancia itself withered under the stewardship of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), which recently merged with France’s PSA Group to become Stellantis. It’s unclear what plans Stellantis has for the legendary Italian brand.
This article was originally published by Motor Authority, an editorial partner of ClassicCars.com.
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Got to love Jay Leno. He loves cars as many of us do. He shares his love of cars and makes car guys happy. I want to go race in mine tonight.
we finally managed to buy one to race in imsa. lancia was still selling cars in america and were afraid we’d drive it on the street and get them in trouble. chequered flag in england helped us a lot. i won’t go into all our problems. next year ’77 we went back. we’d paid $12,600 for the car and they offered us a couple more at a huge discount. shoulda woulda coulda! we did drive it from torino to the qe2 in cherbourg and then from boston to tulsa. never was the sort of car you’d want to take for an afternoon drive