2006 Lancia Delta HPE Concept

Past Perfect

A false dawn from 2003.

_{Editor’s note: The original version of this piece appeared on DTW in February 2016. Today’s version reflects a re-evaluation of the 2003 concept.}

Over the four decades FIAT Auto was in control, it had been possible to obtain an insight to the health of the parent company’s fortunes by how much development resource was drip-fed towards their habitually impoverished Lancia division. In the early years of the new millennium, despite being heavily indebted and messily extracting itself from an abortive association with General Motors, FIAT seemed primed to Continue reading “Past Perfect”

Concepts: 2003 Lancia Granturismo Stilnovo

The 2003 Lancia Granturismo Stilnovo concept illustrated that size and proportion matters.

Still credible. 2003 Lancia Stilnovo. Image: media.stellantis

_{Editor’s note: As a companion to this week’s Saab concept retrospective, we turn to a near-contemporary from Turin. This piece was first published on 4th October 2014 as part of the Concepts theme.}

One of the last Lancias had a five year gestation from concept car to production. In this case there were two concepts, a real one and a pre-production model. One of them was not helpful.

Lancia showed the Lancia Granturismo Stilnovo at the 2003 Barcelona motor show as a genuine kite-flying concept car, one of quite a few quite credible studies they showed around this time. Three years later these ideas were translated into the production ready Lancia Delta HPE concept which was first revealed at the 2006 Venice International Film Festival. This then took a remarkable two years to Continue reading “Concepts: 2003 Lancia Granturismo Stilnovo”

Second Failure

With Marchionne at Fiat’s helm, corners were cut at Lancia. Yet, the company indulged in a pointless, bandwagon-jumping, and failed marketing drive in Second Life.

The 2008 Lancia Delta in real life. Image: autocentrum

I thought the gross mismanagement of Lancia at the hands of Fiat had been exhaustively detailed, both here and in other corners of the internet. Recently, though, I spoke with an old friend from my university years, who like me, owns a third-generation Delta^[1]. It had been a while since we last spoke, so our Skype call lasted a while, as we talked about all manner of things – from our family lives and our jobs to the things that interested us back then.

One of those things was Linden Lab’s once-overhyped, but now largely forgotten 3D, sandbox-style, virtual world named Second Life^[2] (SL for short). As young, wide-eyed PhD candidates looking to explore the capabilities of contemporary virtual reality platforms for collaborative design and simulation, we had both dabbled with it. Seeking to attract investors looking for a quick buck, LL’s founder and CEO Philip Rosedale made extremely bold claims about how SL would Continue reading “Second Failure”