Hi, I'm Franz. We're down here at the cave at the Peterson Museum and I'm really excited to talk a little bit about this 1977 Lancia Stratos.
This Stratos is actually one of my favorite cars. And a fun fact, it's actually in my personal collection, this very car. Since I was a kid, I always thought the Stratos was really this amazing combination of the wedge era coming to life and being extremely functional. The Stratos became the world's most winning rally car of all time. And it really proved that the function of the wedge era, this wedge design concept that started several years before, proved itself to be successful on the world stage in rallies and in racing, but also as a customer car. This is just an incredible car. From a design perspective, it's really simple, which is what really draws me towards it. If you look at the lines, it's really just one clean wedge and this incredible round intersection of the cabin just above it. I think Gandini was just doing an amazing job at this time coming out of the Strato Zero concept and turning that concept, which is really wild and really got me into what I do today, into a street going car and a rally car. I like to say it was my daily driver, but it's not quite.
They were supposed to make a small amount, like 600 cars, and they didn't quite make that many. But in terms of this being an influential car for the future, what comes to mind for me is just the purity of the forms. I've been talking about these intersecting forms, and you just see it here: this really clean wedge, this intersected cabin, these intersected fenders. I think there's a cleanliness and purity of that concept that we're starting to see again in some cars today. Throughout the rest of the Wedge exhibit, you'll see this kind of purity of design through the Bulldog, the Strato Zero, even the Countach. These really pure designs. Then fast forward to when we were thinking about the Cybertruck, that was function and form coming together and led to a purity of design that's at an extreme. And I think this car is at an extreme. It was really designed around trying to win a rally race.
Some of my favorite parts about this car: we talked about the wedge shape and the inner section of the cabin being this really beautiful sphere on top of it, but it also has these quintessential '70s elements to it. It's got the louvers in the back window, this funky roll bar—is it a roll bar? It's not really structural. I think it's an aero device, not sure. I think they were experimenting with aerodynamics back in the day. You can see this big wing here, but there's really nothing in the front. So the lift balance might have been a little odd. But what's great about this car is the proportions. It's really compact. The wheelbase is incredibly short, almost as short as the track width, which means the handling of this car, getting around corners and on tight roads—you can really see they were thinking about the rally moments where you have to transition into these turns and get around corners really quickly. This car was just so good at doing that. Even on the road today, when you drive this car around, it feels incredibly nimble. There's not really a car that has the character of super lightweight, the power that the Ferrari 246 motor had in the back, with this kind of wheelbase layout, and then just this cool style. There's nothing like this on the road today, and even back in the day there was nothing really like it. Something I really love.
If you open the car, another cool feature is even on the roadgoing cars, they left a space here in the door for your helmet. Oddly enough, I barely fit in this car. I'm 6'3" and can just wedge myself in, and once you're in, you're in for a ride, that's for sure. When you're sitting inside this car, because the wheelbase is so short, your front wheel is right where your footbox is. So your feet are pushing into the center. You're kind of sitting a little bit crooked, but honestly you don't really feel it, and you feel really connected to the car, which is the thing I really love about it. Visibility is amazing. They have this somewhat innovative for the time super interesting window that has a really basic mechanism where you twist this thing and slide the window down, and it just pivots. That's how much window you get, but it's really all you need to get the air in. I'm a blue fan and I love the color combination of the blue with the gold wheels and these just really period awesome graphics that Bertone was doing back in the day, and they just put it right on the car. It's just another one of those really great classic '70s vibe feel. You feel like the car has this modern quality to it but has these hints of its period.
Okay, so we just talked about the Lancia Stratos, and here we are now with the precursor to the Stratos, the Stratos Zero. This car was done in 1970. Gandini gone wild. This car, believe it or not, is probably one of the reasons I got into becoming an automotive designer. It's just... my gosh, look at this thing. The epitome of wedge. It's just one line nose to tail, and it's not even up to my waist. It's crazy to think that a human, let alone two humans, can fit in here. But it's all sorts of innovation, just really radical for its time. If you just start from the nose, very square, super low nose keeps the air pressure down, and these radical side windows. The windshield actually opens up. So you climb in from the front, and there's even a tread guard here. The logo is how you open up the windshield. You climb in over the steering wheel, pull the steering wheel down to close the windshield, and you're just nestled in this arrow of a vehicle.
Speaking of arrows, as you move back, the cooling for the engine, it's a mid engine, and just this really cool shape of a vent on the roof that continues to break your mind a little bit about what this car is. These wedge cars, you think of them as being extremely flat and really almost wooden in their shape, but you look at this car and you see these really complex geometries. With a car like this, it's a concept, so you don't have to deal with bumpers and federal regulations and things. But the car actually, they were thinking about being able to see. Obviously you have these really cool side windows, but integrated into the front fender are the rear view mirrors. Really cool idea that you don't even notice when you first see the car. This character line starts to pick up turning into the Countach. The original Countach had the wheel opening that's really similar and just kind of evolved maybe out of this line as well. You can see where Gandini was taking some of the ideas from this car and projecting forward into some of the future cars that we see. All the Bugatti kind of picked up on this. You see in the Chiron and the subsequent cars where they're really taking that character line over the A-pillar and bringing it back around. So maybe there's an influence from this car flashing forward to a lot of little elements that you see in cars today. And then you've got this thing that's a little bit tacked on up here. I think I prefer the car without the mirror on it, and the Matchbox that I had didn't have the mirror on it, but I understand the functionality.
Think of it, it's 1970 and there are just some radical ideas, not just in the form language that really led to the kind of wedge revolution that Gandini started, that continue to evolve into cars like the Countach and the Stratos production car and several cars beyond that. And then you saw the other Italian design houses like Pininfarina and Ghia and those guys also approaching wedge and coming up with their own language to it. This car, the stories behind it, driving underneath the marker to get into the Ferrari headquarters. It's innovative. If you look at the interior from my angle, you can see that there's an almost exact size iPad as the control panel on the left side of the steering wheel. Just super cool forward-thinking ideas in this car. And just imagine driving something so low to the ground with this windshield that goes right down to your toes. Just epic feel. The side windows, right behind the rear window, you can see right down to the ground. You almost feel like you can touch the ground as you're driving. Super pure. As you come to the back, this aerographic when you stand behind the car, it's just thrusting forward. Really radical arrow-shaped louvers on this kind of sensuous beautiful forms as it climbs over the nose and goes down to the front and then just abrupt end, and got these awesome little exhaust pipes in the back and these really wide tires. Just super cool. The stance on this car is great. Just futuristic vibe. There's nothing like this car. It's like an alien landed on the streets. It's incredibly inspirational to be around a vehicle like this that got mine and so many other people, kids, inspired about what the future of automotive design could be. This car was really doing that for me.
So I just got to talk about two of my favorite cars, both Lancia Stratos, and you can see them here at the Peterson Museum in Los Angeles. So come on down and check them out in the Wedge exhibit.
