GENEVA MOTOR SHOW: Stratos to be reborn

Everyone loved the Lancia Stratos. Well, everyone except Lancia, because it never built a second generation.

And look where that got them. Lancia is now a dead-brand walking, selling just one model (based off a Fiat) and almost all of those sales are in Italy.

So it won’t be Lancia that builds the reborn Stratos, but Manifattura Automobili Torino (MAT), an Italian sports car maker, and it will debut at next month’s Geneva motor show. While no price has been announced, it’s expected to cost more than half a million euros.

It’s not exactly all their MAT’s work, though, because the design was originally commissioned in 2010 by German billionaire (and chairman of the Brose automotive supplier) Michael Stoschek and his New Stratos GbR company.

“I am delighted that other passionate car enthusiasts will be able to experience how the successor to the most fascinating rally car of the 1970s still sets the bar for design and performance,” Stoschek said.

And in a major overthrow of history, the homage to the original, Bertone-designed Stratos has been penned and engineered by the Italian design house’s arch-rival, Pininfarina.

The reborn Stratos will be about the same length as the 3710mm original and MAT is claiming it will weigh only 1274kg. There is no news on what chassis it sits on, nor what powertrain it will use.

The original reborn Stratos concept used a shortened version of Ferrari’s spaceframe aluminium F430 chassis, which lead to Ferrari kyboshing any low-volume production plans.

So, while it’s safe to suggest it won’t be sitting on any Ferrari architecture, a big-engined version of the Alfa Romeo 4C’s carbon-fibre chassis would make both economic and dynamic sense.

The low-volume carbon tub for the Alfa is itself a variation of the Dallara-designed KTM X-Bow sports car, so it’s already proven itself to be flexible.

MAT’s announcement only suggests it obtained from Stoschek “permission to replicate the New Stratos using the same design and technologies of his car”.

The powerplant is similarly secret, with MAT claiming it will be able to deliver in excess of 410kW of power from what, presumably, is a V6 engine.

It’s certainly not going to be a Ferrari V6, like the original was, or a Ferrari F430’s 4.3-litre V8, like the concept car had behind its cockpit.

Pictures indicate its gearbox can be left to its own devices or shifted via the paddles on the steering wheel.

While Lancia built 492 Stratos coupes from 1973 to 1978, MAT will build and sell only 25 of the homage cars, with a range of different chassis tunes, a GT racer and even a high-riding Safari Rally version.

It retains many of the Stratos’s design signatures, including its cold-chisel wedge shape, its exaggerated windscreen curve and its removable bonnet and engine cover.

Its roll cage will be integrated into the chassis, its doors will hold helmets for both occupants.

MAT is no fly-by-night organisation, either. Amongst its more than 50 one-off models, it has built the Arrow for Apollo and the glorious SCG003S for Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus.