The Homologators – Lancia Fulvia Coupé

Elephants are unstoppable. Like Alfa Romeo’s “Quadrifoglio Verde,” Gianni Lancia, son of company founder Vincenzo, adorned the company’s racing cars with a lucky charm. He chose a cartoon elephant. Some say the talisman was borrowed from Eastern mythology, where it was believed to bring good luck and victory. Others speculate it is a metaphor, as a charging elephant is a near-unstoppable force. We may never know exactly what he had in mind, but it certainly seemed to work and the Fulvia is a case in point.

Against all odds, the cash-strapped, under-resourced Lancia HF Squadra Corse became among the most successful racing teams of all time. And it’s mostly thanks to one man – Cesare Fiorio. Son of Lancia’s then-Director of Communications, the young Italian founded HF Squadra Corse in 1963 as an offshoot of the ‘Hi-Fi Association’. And no, this had nothing to do with your dad’s old stereo. The ‘High Fidelity’ was a group of passionate Lancisti formed at the 1960 Geneva Motor Show as an exclusive club for those who had bought at least six new Lancias. It was headed by Commander Guido Alberto Rivetti, whose family was rumoured to have purchased as many as 712 Lancias in all!

So why did Cesare Fiorio, a young man with connections at the heart of Lancia, start a race team with practically no support from the factory? Well, first, you need to understand the historical context. The 1950s had been a troubling time for the history of motor racing. The infamous Le Mans Disaster of 1955 dissuaded Mercedes-Benz, and indeed the entire country of Switzerland, from future motor racing. The tragedies continued, with the horrific crash at Quiddizola making 1957 the last of the original Mille Miglia, making a scapegoat villain of Enzo Ferrari in the process. Understandably, manufacturers were deeply concerned for the wellbeing of their drivers and the potential harm these terrible accidents could do to their companies’ reputations. Ultimately, dozens of drivers lost their lives during this dangerous period of motor racing, and it was specifically the untimely demise of Alberto Ascari that prompted Gianni Lancia to cancel the racing programme and even go so far as to leave the firm.

It was going to take an outsider to get Lancias to win races again, and that’s exactly what Fiorio and HF Squadra Corse did. He would go on to captain the team to ten World Rally Championship wins and three World Sportscar titles. And the car that started it all? Well, that would be the Fulvia.

Ever the innovator, Lancia ensured that the Fulvia was anything but conventional. Fiat and Alfa’s ‘60s saloons and coupés played it safe with DOHC inline-four engines driving the rear wheels. But the Fulvia spearheaded a completely different approach, instead using a V4 engine to drive the front wheels. With a 45-degree V-angle, Lancia’s engine proved so narrow that all four pistons shared one twin-cam cylinder head. The very fact they made this engine work at all was impressive, let alone the realisation that it was utterly brilliant. The Lancia V4 thrived on revs, earning a reputation as one of the most tractable naturally-aspirated four-cylinder engines of all time.

Front-wheel-drive would turn out to be the Fulvia’s party trick – predating the “hot hatchback” phenomenon and certainly among the first uses of the technology in a car with sporting aspirations alongside fellow rally stalwart the Mini. Like the Mini, the Fulvia used the extra weight over its driven wheels to find traction on loose surfaces where its rear-wheel-drive competitors struggled. The Fulvia could outbrake them on tarmac too, as it boasted disc brakes on all four wheels – a real rarity at the time, not to mention that competition car essential – the ‘dog-leg’ five-speed gearbox.

Fiorio later recalled that HF Squadra Corse started out with just two mechanics and a (very small) shed courtesy of Lancia. They had so little equipment in the early days that much of the rally preparation was outsourced. Lancia finished eighth overall in the very first rally the car entered in 1965, the Tour de Corse In fact, they won the Italian Rally Championship every year from 1965 until 1973, with the one exception of 1970 when a Fiat 124 pipped it to the post. Nobody’s perfect – as that Porsche ad once said….

The team initially campaigned Fulvia Coupés with 1.2 and 1.3-litre engines. But the car truly flourished in 1969, with the advent of the HF1600 “Fanalone”. The 1600 output a very respectable 165 bhp in rally tune or an equally potent 130 horsepower for the initial 1,258 road-going homologation specials made available to the general public. It was this iteration of Fulvia that secured a historic victory at the 1972 Rallye de Monte Carlo with Sandro Munari at the helm and Mario Mannucci as navigator. Winning the Monte Carlo was such a big deal. So much so that Lancia attributed it to a significant boost in sales, prolonging the life of the Fulvia Coupé and reigniting a passion not only for the brand but also for rallying. It was this victory that kickstarted an illustrious rally car lineage with the Stratos, 037, Delta Integrale and Delta S4.

So what happened to Cesare Fiorio, the man behind the team’s newfound success? He was almost booted out when Fiat bought Lancia in 1969. But he recounts that Agnelli recognised his talents and elected to keep him on. Fiat ownership gave Fiorio much-needed resources and access to the other manufacturers in Fiat’s empire, allowing him to use Ferrari engines in the Stratos. As has recently been chronicled in the 2024 film ‘Race for Glory: Audi vs. Lancia’, Fiorio would captain HF Squadra Corse through the legendary 1983 WRC season, the last time a rear-wheel-drive car in the form of the Lancia 037 held off the Audi Quattro. He’d go on to work with a number of the manufacturers Fiat owned, being appointed Head of Sporting Activities for Fiat in 1984, Head of Squadra Corsa Alfa Romeo in 1986 and Ferrari F1’s Sporting Director in 1989.

While it blossomed just before the World Rally Championship came into being, the Fulvia continues to be recognised as one of the all-time great rally cars – and rightly so. The Fulvia ignited Lancia’s rally career, having a seismic impact on the sport’s history and, arguably, it kept Lancia going.

Stellantis recently announced a new all-electric Lancia Ypsillon HF, the latest car to sport the charging elephant. The company says it “reinterprets its historical counterpart with a contemporary flair.” Hmmm, we wonder what Signor Fiorio thinks of it.