Curbside Classic: 1952 Lancia Aurelia B20 GT – Groundbreaking And Breathtaking

All good things come to those who wait. It may have taken CC nigh on 15 years, but we’re going to have an in-depth look at what was arguably the most sophisticated Italian car of the ‘50s, the one, the only Lancia Aurelia. Yes, I too would have preferred a 100% stock model – an early 4-door saloon would have been my personal choice, truth be told – but this B20 Coupé will do nicely.

Turin, 1945. The Lancia factory is slowly trying to get back to regular production of the Aprilia, a highly advanced model launched in 1937, even as company founder Vincenzo Lancia died of a heart attack. The company was now run by his widow, Adele Lancia, who found an ideal head engineer in Vittorio Jano, fresh from Alfa Romeo. Gianni Lancia, the son and heir, was still young, but actively groomed to take his father’s place at the helm.

All this started falling into place in 1945: that year, Gianni turned 21 and started taking a far more active role in the company (though he was still getting his engineering degree), and Jano started work on the upcoming “big” car scheduled to replace the Aprilia.

The Aurelia was to be about as avant-garde as anything this side of Citroën: a platform chassis, the world’s first production V6 engine (made out of aluminium), a four-speed transaxle in the back plus in-board brakes, all-round independent suspension with Lancia’s own sliding pillar system in the front and a sort of semi-trailing arm and coil arrangement in the rear, radial tyres as standard… Sheer science-fiction.

The Aurelia was launched in 1950, initially as a four-door with a 1754cc engine. By 1951, the range had grown to include a GT Coupé with a 1991cc V6 with twin carbs, good for 75hp. The cabriolet seen above was manufactured in small batches by Pininfarina, but is not really considered a “production” model as such.

Similarly, there was a limousine variant included in Lancia’s official brochures – it was actually made by Bertone, and very few were sold. A chassis-only version was of course available for the many coachbuilders who wanted to clothe Italy’s most sophisticated machine.

Here are a few examples of those one-offs and small runs on the Aurelia chassis. Clockwise from top left, we have Boneschi, Balbo, Worblaufen, Viotti (semi-official for Aurelia wagons), Bertone and Vignale.

And here we have the oeuvres of (from top left, again) Allemano, Beutler, Frua, Zagato, Stabilimenti Farina and Monterosa. There are more, let’s focus on the ones more pertinent to the B20 Coupé we’re supposed to be looking at.

As our feature car is a first-year B20 GT, and that’s something special in itself. First, a word about nomenclature: the regular (i.e. saloon) Aurelia was the B10; the B20 was the high-performance variant of the Aurelia and the chassis version was known as the B50. Then, as time went on, the Aurelia was subject to modifications, which meant the numbers changed a bit. The 2nd series saloon was the B12, the Pininfarina spider was the B24, etc.

It’s a bit complicated because the Aurelia was ameliorated constantly. Over the years, there were four engine sizes, seven different block castings, two completely different rear suspensions, two transaxles and so on. It’s a challenge to figure it all out.

But luckily, this one is a first-year B20 GT, so it’s fairly easy to figure out what it would have been like when it came off the production line. Which is not what it looks like now, obviously. I’m not sure when the many rally mods were made exactly, but they are extensive and distinctive, which helped me identify this car online.

Image-searching through the (many) B20s one can conjure up on Google, I came upon our feature car in this Sotheby’s page. The colour, the interior, the weird roof scoop – it was all there, identical. So this is B20-1340, completed in December 1951 (which would make it a ’52 model) and sold in Italy originally. It migrated to the UK in 1998 and then to Japan sometime in the last five years.

Early B20 GTs are sought after for being lighter and more agile than their successors, though with only 75hp under the hood, they are not the fastest. The series 2 cars, with their 118hp engines, are said to be the best of the breed, while later 2.5 litre cars are substantially heavier, but downright fast – perhaps a bit too much for their own good.

Strangely enough, the B20 Coupé changed very little in appearance between 1951 and 1958, especially compared to the many evolutions its chassis underwent during that time. Oh, there were a few odds and sods that did change over time, like those headlights, which are a feature of the early cars.

The story of the B20 Coupé is an odd one, though. In 1950, one of the most successful carrozzerie was Ghia. Gianni Lancia asked Ghia director Felice Boano if his shop could devise a sporty coupé version of the new Aurelia and Boano was only too pleased to acquiesce.

Time was of the essence, so Ghia designer Giovanni Michelotti more or less recycled a design that Ghia had just made for the Fiat 1900, but made it lower, grafted a Lancia grille on the nose and made the windscreen a one-piece. Presto, the Lancia Aurelia GT was born. And then it was premiered at the Turin Motor Show in 1951, the response was actually pretty crazy. Orders poured in, and now Lancia and Ghia were in a bit of a pickle.

Ghia was not set up to manufacture cars in anything more than handfuls. The above Aurelia specials by Ghia were all stunning one-offs, including the Italian president’s car (top right) no less, but the coachbuilder had a staff of 30 workers and only enough space for a dozen cars in its shop. Boano farmed out the bulk of the work to Viotti, but the cars still had to come back to Ghia for finishing touches, and this immediately became an obvious bottleneck.

Lancia had to find a solution, and that became Pininfarina. Production of the Aurelia B20 gradually moved there by late 1951, after Ghia and Viotti had manufactured about a hundred cars. Pininfarina, incidentally, would be the most prolific of all coachbuilders on the Aurelia, as we can see above… and below…

I mean, I limited the selection to 12 models here, but there were quite a few more. Well, there is the ultimate Pininfarina Lancia design, of course…

Ah, the Florida… What a design coup that was. The very first Florida seen here was made in 1955 on the Aurelia chassis, both as a four-door and a two-door hardtop. PF reworked the concept on the Flaminia platform in 1957, but the original one remains my favourite.

But I digress. The B20 GT was a true best-seller, in that Lancia could reliably count on shifting about 500 of them per annum through the better part of the ‘50s. This may sound like tiny numbers, but compared to how many cars Ferrari, Maserati or even Alfa Romeo were selling at the time, it’s quite an achievement. The slow-selling cabriolet was replaced by a sexy Spider in 1955, as we can see above – also made by Pininfarina.

By this point, the four-door saloon was on its way out. For 1956-58, only the two-door variants carried on in the range.

Italian market Aurelias were right-hand drive – just like Ferraris, Talbots, Alfas or Delahayes of the early ‘50s, this was the mark of a sporty and exclusive car on the Continent at the time. Among the many modifications this particular car has had, we can note interesting bucket seats and the retrofitting of a later B20’s floor shifter.

For reference, here is what a 1951 Aurelia B20 GT interior would have looked like when new. Remember, the gearbox is between the rear wheels. That shifter linkage must be a nightmare…

About 18,200 Aurelias were made, including about 850 specials / one-offs and 3871 units of the Coupé. Again, that sounds minuscule from our vantage point, but we’re talking about a highly sophisticated and expensive machine here. In 1955, a B20 Coupé cost over $6000 in the US. That was a chunk of change, like fully-optioned top-level Packard or Cadillac money. Or about half a Bentley.

I’ve had the pleasure to see this Lancia a few times on my regular Sunday morning jaunts. Even if I would rather it had more of a stock feel to it, it never fails to impress. The owners seem to like to drive it pretty hard, just the way it was meant to be.

 

Related Reading

Curbside Classic: Lancia Aurelia – The Right Way To Do Suicide Doors, by PN

Vintage Capsule Overview: Lancia Aurelia B20 Coupe, by Robert Kim

Cohort Sighting: Lancia Aurelia B24 Spyder – So Beautiful, It Hurts, by Perry Shoar