This car, Lot 16, sold for $696,891 (£528,750), including buyer’s premium, at Gooding & Company’s London, U.K., auction, on August 30, 2024.
Vincenzo Lancia was born in Northern Italy in 1881. In his late teens, he was an apprentice mechanic. At that time, when automobiles were in their infancy, this also meant being able to design and produce parts. He was talented, but also quickly earned a reputation as a test driver who was able to diagnose faults. At an age when racing was an important tool to sell cars, Fiat picked up on the young Vincenzo, and he became one of two factory drivers starting in 1900. Both he and his teammate, Felice Nazzaro, achieved great success in the long, grueling events of the day, but with different philosophies. Lancia pushed his cars to the limits on a make-or-break basis, while Nazzaro was generally content to inherit the lead.
Vincenzo was well paid for his efforts, and in 1906 started Lancia & Co. to produce his own automobiles. Although work started on the prototype of his first car, he continued racing for Fiat through 1907. And then he never raced again.
The ABCs of Lancias
The first production Lancia automobile was called Alpha, after the first letter in the Greek alphabet, and subsequent models were also so-named: Beta, Delta, etc. These appellations would be reused by Fiat when it eventually took over Lancia in the 1970s.
Lancias were innovative, lightweight and gradually gained a good reputation. In 1915, Lancia patented a design for a narrow-angle V-formation engine, and this idea, when eventually put into production on series cars, would feature on most Lancias for the next 50 years. But the car that made Lancia famous was the Lambda.
Series production of the Lambda started in 1923, and it was revolutionary. Gone was the classic ladder chassis, in was the monocoque. This unibody construction was considerably lighter and more rigid, but it would take other manufacturers decades to adopt the same technique. The engine was a very narrow V4 using an aluminum block and a single cylinder head. The uninitiated would simply assume it was a standard inline-4. The independent front suspension with upright telescopic shocks was another first. And brakes on all four corners were extremely rare at the time.
Evolved and improved
The Lambda was a good car, and as it evolved through the sixth series, it got better and better. With a relatively small engine displacement of 2,120 cc, it was not particularly fast, but it was easy to drive, with exceptional comfort and roadholding. In 1924, The Autocar, an early motoring magazine, wrote, “We consider that this is the first car of its category that can be driven for eight to ten hours without excessive fatigue.”
By June 1926, with the introduction of the seventh series, the car had come of age and orders were flowing in from across the globe. Displacement had increased to 2,380 cc, with a host of other improvements. For the eighth series, the engine size increased again to 2,570 cc.
Initially, Lancia had no desire to make race cars, but some privateers had a measure of success with the Lambda. The company policy changed in 1927 with the advent of the first Mille Miglia. Lancia made some special cars for this event and one of them finished in 3rd place.
A record sale
Our subject car, an eighth-series, was one of nine factory team cars built for the Mille Miglia in 1928. Six were factory-bodied tourers, and three were clothed by Casaro as spiders. They featured special cylinder heads, higher compression, lowered suspension and many other improvements over the standard car. One of these cars was in the lead 300 kilometers from the finish line when it was involved in an accident. The Lambdas had to content themselves with finishes of 3rd and 5th. That was the last time the factory went racing until the 1950s, but it was willing to build competition cars for privateers. Records do not show where 18609 placed.
The next owner put a reported 250k miles on the car, and subsequent custodians added to that. Stating that the car retained its original engine must have raised a few eyebrows; the broader community believes it to be on its third engine, probably supplied and numbered by the factory.
The Lambda was a very successful car for a small bespoke company, with about 13,000 cars sold during the eight-year production run. Of these, 3,100 were eighth-series models. So even if we assume that many have gone to the scrapyard in the sky, they are not rare. And people don’t buy them by accident. They are strictly reserved for the cognoscenti.
Auction prices are all over the map, with this particular car setting a new auction record at $697k — roughly 25% more than the next-highest sale in the SCM Platinum Auction Database. Reportedly the only survivor of the nine Mille Miglia cars, it’s a slam-dunk entry for that hugely oversubscribed event. It will also benefit from the highest “coefficient” (a points multiplier based on multiple factors, but mostly vehicle age), so the new owner could realistically run for an overall win. Nevertheless, well sold. ♦
