My Budget Italian Sports-car

My Second Response to Logan’s 2 Truths and a Lie Challenge

I once owned a brand new, sand colored (after repaint from puke yellow), tobacco brown leather interior, 1977 Lancia Beta HPE, 5 speed, highly tweaked. The picture above is of a similar car, but not the one I had. Mine was equipped with sharp chrome exhaust tips, factory alloy wheels and huge (for the time) 215mm 14in Pirelli tires. It was the only non air conditioned vehicle I ever owned because I bought it in San Diego where I didn’t need it. It was my graduation present to myself after I took the bar exam upon completing law school. It cost the princely sum of $75oo and I had to plead and cajole the dealer to sell it to me. He wasn’t sure that a newly minted lawyer without a job was a particularly good credit risk. I think he only relented because it wasn’t air conditioned and, let’s face it, it was puke yellow — not a particularly appealing color. It had been sitting on the lot gathering dust for months, attracting little interest.

I couldn’t have been happier and prouder. A real Italian sports car. I may have lusted after Ferraris and Lamborghinis, but let’s face it, they were waaaay out of my price range. And it was an HPE, a High Performnce Estate. As any proper Italian or English gentleman knows, an HPE is the only way to go for hauling the mistress of the house and the children to the country estate for the weekend. It was the very definition of understated elegance and style. It was the perfect ride for an aspiring F Lee Bailey.

Fiat bought Lancia, a small Italian, hand crafted, custom car builder with an enviable racing pedigree in the 70’s, I think. Cars were getting more complicated and the ever growing list of emission and safety regulations made it impossible for smaller manufacturers to compete. For the sake of manufacturing efficiency they started droppping 2 liter Fiat engines into the ones destined for sale in the U.S.— not what that once venerable brand deserved, but a pretty bullet proof power plant none the less. Stock, every new American car of the era was pretty much a pig. Engines were burdened with exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) valves, catalytic converters turning exhaust systems asthmatic and smaller leaned out carburetor jets to cut down on NOx emissions. Dreaded engine knock was ever present. Even the once venerable 454 Corvette had been reduced from a 427 hp fire breathing monster to an anemic 150 hp powerplant with COPD.

It was clear that I had to give the proper massaging to make the Fiat engine worthy of the car . Out came the EGR valve, the restrictive muffler, the emission friendly carburetor sucking air through a drinking straw. In their place went dual overhead 3/4 race cams, tri y headers with Abarth muffler and exhaust tips, shaved head to push compression to 10:5 to 1 and dual Webber 48DCOE side draft carburetors. The valve springs were left stock because they already had an inner and outer spring allowing the engine to rev to 8000rpm without valve float — an unheard of rev limit for a street car at that time. Net result? Boosted power from 130hp to about 250. Not bad f0r a 2700 pound automobile. OMG, it was now a rocket and made those wonderful Italian sports car sounds.

With the engine mods, I needed to tweak the suspension to properly handle the newfound power. In went fully adjustable Koni shocks, more robust front and rear sway bars. Out with the 175mm stock all weather tires and in with the fat 215mm high performance Pirellis. Who cared that they only lasted about 10,000 miles? They stuck like a gecko on a plate glass window. The addition of semi-metallic brake pads completed the transformation. Of course, I had to add a bottle of STP octane booster with every fill up to keep the engine from self destructing, but who cared? It was now a proper Italian sports car in every respect. More than once a surprised Porsche or Mustang driver would eye it carefully after being blown into the weeds. To outward appearance it looked almost stock. The only clues were the chrome exhaust tips, the slightly fatter tires and of course that glorious engine sound.

As I moved I took that car from San Diego to Washington D.C. to Philadelphia to Florida. It was always more a play vehicle than serious transportation. I had a station wagon and later a minivan to haul the kids, but the Lancia was my mistress. It provided endless hours of entertainment on the weekend, balancing the carburetors and fiddling with the aftermarket Koni adjustable shocks and then ”testing” the adjustments on the local roads. I had put so much work in it that it was a thinly disguised street legal (sort of) race car. My boyhood friend Bill Tucker, now a Lincoln car salesman, was neighbors with Phil Hill on St Petersburg’s Snell Isle. Phil was a giant in racing circles — the first truly successful American Formula One factory race car driver. His celebrity gave us access to a number of famous racing venues like the airport at Sebring to run our cars flat out in formal and informal car races. He would usually bring some Datsun 2000s or Formula Fords. Occasionally I would enter my Lancia in local SCCA club races, often finishing on the podium. It did not have the required racing safety modifications to qualify it for being run on the professional circuits, but it allowed me to indulge my fantasy of being a professional race car driver while tending to the real life obligations of raising a family and building my legal career.

It ultimately died an ignoble death. I left it in the garage while hurricane Elena churned in the gulf of Mexico— a hurricane that was not really a hurricane, since it never actually made landfall on the west coast of Florida, but it did spend 5 days wandering aimlessly off the coast pumping water into Tampa Bay and ultimately flooding the waterfront property I lived on. We had been evacuated, and when I returned, it had been buried under 42” of water for 2 days. The mechanical parts were shot and the salt cancer was terminal. I got a check from the insurance company and they sold if for scrap. I’d like to think it was reborn as a Corvette or some other vehicle worthy of its heritage. I hope it didn’t end up as shovels in Home Depot.

So is any of this true? I’ve lived a varied and interesting life, sometimes challenging, but never dull. Share your thoughts in the comment Section and stay tuned for the my final installment in Logan’s challenge. Remember the rules are 2 true stories and 1 lie. See if you can figure out which one. I’m a lawyer. I always play by the rules except when I don’t. I wouldn’t mislead you, would I? Stay tuned. All will be eventually revealed.