Tag Archives: Lancia

NEW CARS

Lancia’s Rally Resurrection: The Ypsilon Rally2 HF Integrale Marks the Return of a Legend

If you’ve ever spent a late night falling down a YouTube rabbit hole of Delta Integrale stage wins—or if your idea of church is watching Group A cars four-wheel-drifting through a misty forest—Lancia probably occupies a mystical corner of your mind.
And in 2026, that mystique returns to the world stage with a shock of noise, turbo lag, and Italian bravado.

At Stellantis Motorsport’s headquarters in Satory, France, Lancia pulled the wraps off the Ypsilon Rally2 HF Integrale, the brand’s first factory-backed rally weapon in decades and its ticket back into the FIA World Rally Championship—specifically the fiercely competitive WRC2 class.

But make no mistake: this isn’t some nostalgia-fueled heritage cash-grab. Lancia isn’t here to celebrate the past. It’s here to threaten the competition.

A Renaissance Built on Reality, Not Romanticism

For all the emotion tied to Lancia’s past—11 World Rally Constructors’ titles, wins at the Mille Miglia, Targa Florio, and Carrera Panamericana—the brand’s return isn’t about recreating 1980s posters.
This comeback leans on something far more contemporary: Stellantis’ sprawling engineering empire.

Satory serves as a melting pot where French, Italian, Spanish and German engineers work shoulder to shoulder. Balocco, Italy, delivers Lancia’s chassis sensibility. Turin gives the design its unmistakable Lancia flavor. Together, they’ve turned the new HF family into more than a revival story—they’ve created a performance ecosystem.

That ecosystem already proved itself in the 2025 Trofeo Lancia, where the Ypsilon Rally4 HF attracted over 40 teams and helped Lancia clinch the Italian Rally Championship 2WD Manufacturers’ Title. The return wasn’t just emotional. It was effective.

Meet the New Hammer: Ypsilon Rally2 HF Integrale

The Rally2 HF Integrale may share a name with Lancia’s greatest hits album, but it’s a modern machine built to modern rules—and with modern firepower.

Specs That Mean Business

  • 1.6-liter turbo, 32 mm restrictor
    287 hp at 5,000 rpm
    425 Nm at 4,000 rpm
  • SADEV 5-speed sequential, twin-plate clutch
  • Mechanical diffs front + rear
  • Reiger 3-way dampers, all-surface tuned
  • New bodyshell + FIA roll cage for rigidity and safety
  • 355 mm Alcon brakes (tarmac), 300 mm (gravel)

If you know Rally2, you know this class is a knife fight—tight budgets, tight rules, tiny margins. Which is why Stellantis drew on the same brains behind Peugeot and Citroën’s WRC dominance (13 titles, 150 wins) to create this car.

The result is a Ypsilon in name only. In character? This thing wears the HF badge like it means it.

Lancia will field the Rally2 Integrale in at least eight WRC2 events in 2026, starting with Monte-Carlo. Customer cars arrive early 2026, sold through Stellantis’ Racing Shop and aligned with the FIA cost cap.

A Whole HF Family, Not Just a Halo

The Rally2 isn’t launching alone. Lancia now has a full staircase for drivers—from their first rally to their first championship hunt.

Ypsilon HF Racing — The Gateway Car

A 145-hp, 1.2-liter turbo, short-ratio 6-speed, mechanical LSD, FIA cage, and price tag of €38,900.
Think of it as the Miata of rallying, if the Miata wore Sparco underwear and slid on gravel for a living.

Ypsilon Rally4 HF — The Trophy Slayer

212 hp from a turbo triple, SADEV sequential, Ohlins three-way dampers, massive 330-mm brakes.
It’s already the heart of the Trofeo Lancia—fast, lively, and durable enough to survive Italy’s worst tarmac.

Ypsilon HF 280-hp Electric — The Road-Going Shock

The first real glimpse at Lancia’s production future.
280 hp, 0–100 km/h in 5.6 seconds, 54-kWh pack, 370 km WLTP.
Alcon brakes, Torsen diff, Delta-esque stance, and Stratos-inspired taillamps.

It’s the first Lancia road car in decades that earns the HF badge instead of inheriting it.

Ypsilon HF Line — The Daily Driver With Rally Notes

110-hp hybrid, HF visuals, Level-2 ADAS, and enough orange stitching to wallpaper a loft in Milan.
It won’t win a special stage, but it makes your commute feel like one.

2025: The Season That Proved Lancia Still Has It

The 2025 Trofeo Lancia was a full-blown phenomenon.
Six rounds, packed Lancia Villages, historic cars on display, and a Rally4 HF that took 25% of all CIAR entries.

Gianandrea Pisani and Nicola Biagi won the championship early, then bagged the CIAR 2WD drivers’ crown—a milestone Lancia hadn’t touched in over thirty years. As promised, the series champ gets promoted to Lancia’s ERC squad for 2026.

It was more than a return. It was a statement: Lancia still knows how to win hearts—and rallies.

2026: The Real Test Begins

Next season, Lancia goes global again.
WRC2, the ERC, and national championships in Italy, France, Spain, and Belgium. New drivers. New updates. New pressure.

And the Ypsilon Rally2 HF Integrale will be carrying not just a badge but the weight of a dynasty.

As Miki Biasion—two-time world champion and official project advisor—put it:

“When someone dreams of rallying, they dream of Lancia.”

For the first time in decades, that dream has a brand-new shape, a brand-new sound, and a brand-new set of stage times waiting to be written.

Source: Stellantis

News

The Holy Trinity of Italian Genius — Stellantis Heritage Unleashes Lancia, Abarth, and Alfa at Bologna’s Auto e Moto d’Epoca

If you’ve ever wondered what Italian passion looks like distilled into metal, chrome, and the occasional whiff of burnt oil, Stellantis Heritage just handed you the answer on a polished silver platter. This year’s Auto e Moto d’Epoca in Bologna (October 23–26) won’t just be another nostalgia trip through Europe’s most glamorous automotive archive. No — it’s a full-blooded celebration of Italy’s obsession with beauty, bravery, and speed.

At the centre of the show? Three legends from the Stellantis vault, each representing a different decade, a different dream, and one relentless national instinct — fare di più. Do more. Push harder. Build faster.

From the hallowed halls of the Heritage Hub in Turin and the Alfa Romeo Museum in Arese, emerge three machines that defined eras and defied reason:

  • the Lancia D25 (1954),
  • the Fiat-Abarth 750 Record (1956), and
  • the Alfa Romeo Scarabeo (1966).

Together, they’re not just cars. They’re rolling testaments to what happens when engineering meets espresso-fueled insanity.

The Mission: Vision, Velocity, Victory

Under the watchful eye of Roberto Giolito, head of Stellantis Heritage and designer of the Fiat Multipla (yes, that one), the brand’s historical wing isn’t just dusting off museum pieces. It’s telling stories — stories about how Italy built cars not merely to move, but to matter.

As Giolito puts it, these machines “aren’t signs of the past, but tangible proof of the Italian drive to innovate with style, courage, and imagination.” Translation: these are the greatest hits of an era when design sketches were drawn with cigarettes and conviction.

Lancia D25 (1954) — The Race That Never Was

If Enzo Ferrari had a rival worthy of his jealousy, it was Vittorio Jano — the genius behind the Lancia D25. Born from the ashes of the Carrera Panamericana-winning D24, this car was the ultimate 1950s racer that never got its chance to show off.

With a 3.75-litre V6 producing 305 hp and a top speed kissing 300 km/h, the D25 could’ve eaten early Ferraris for breakfast. It had the kind of obsessive engineering detail that would make modern chassis designers weep: transaxle rear end, inboard brakes, independent suspension, and a spaceframe chassis that used the engine as a structural member.

But fate — and Formula 1 — intervened. Lancia pulled out of sports car racing, and the D25 never got its day in the sun. Only one example survived, wearing its Pininfarina body like a tailored Italian suit that never went out to dinner. Now, in Bologna, it finally gets the spotlight it deserves — a mechanical opera in 12 cylinders (well, six, but you get the point).

Fiat-Abarth 750 Record (1956) — The Bullet That Beat Time

If Carlo Abarth were alive today, he’d be the kind of man who sets an alarm just to break it. The Fiat-Abarth 750 Record, designed by aerodynamicist and styling sorcerer Franco Scaglione, was a wind-cheating bullet that looked more UFO than automobile.

Its job? Simple: humiliate the stopwatch.

In 1956, at Monza, it smashed six endurance records — including the 24-hour run, covering 3,743 km at 155 km/h average speed. A 750cc engine. One driver. And a whole lot of audacity.

This wasn’t just speed; it was science dressed in aluminium. The Record’s teardrop shape influenced generations of Abarth and Fiat models, proving that performance and beauty could occupy the same slender space. Even Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., son of the U.S. President, flew to Italy just to sign an exclusive deal with Abarth after seeing it. Because when Italy does small, it still does spectacular.

Alfa Romeo Scarabeo (1966) — The Rebel Prototype

And then there’s the Scarabeo. Even by Alfa Romeo standards, this 1966 prototype was pure mischief. It looked like a spaceship, sounded like a race car, and entered the world by flipping its entire roof forward instead of opening doors.

Under its O.S.I.-built skin lived the beating heart of a Giulia GTA — a twin-cam 1.6-litre four-cylinder — mounted transversely in the middle of the car. Radical? Absolutely. Functional? Shockingly so. The tubular chassis even used side members to store fuel tanks, a layout later echoed by Alfa’s racing prototypes.

It debuted at the Paris Motor Show that same year and immediately stole hearts (and headlines). The version on display in Bologna is the second prototype — with doors this time — and it remains an exquisite survivor from a time when Alfa didn’t just build cars; it built ideas on wheels.

Beyond Nostalgia

Between the Heritage Hub in Turin and the Museum in Arese, Stellantis isn’t merely keeping its past alive — it’s turning memory into momentum. Across 15,000 square meters of history, you’ll find engines, legends, and the sort of stories that make you believe the phrase Made in Italy still means something in metal.

So, if you find yourself in Bologna this October, skip the tortellini (just for an hour) and make a pilgrimage to where Italy’s golden era still hums. Three cars, three decades, one truth:

No one does beauty at speed quite like the Italians.

Source: Stellantis

CONCEPT CARS

Lancia Pu+Ra Montecarlo: A Ghost from Turin’s Golden Age

There are two types of car designers. The ones who carefully colour inside Stellantis’ corporate lines, making sure every plastic panel fits neatly with a budget brief. And then there’s Christopher Giroux, a senior Ford man who, in his downtime, decided to resurrect one of Italy’s most charismatic ghosts: the Lancia Montecarlo.

Yes, the Montecarlo — the rakish Pininfarina-penned coupe that arrived in 1975 with mid-engine mischief, rear-wheel drive, and the DNA that would go on to create the flame-spitting Lancia Rally 037, the last rear-driven car to ever beat Audi’s quattro in the WRC. Proper heritage. Proper romance. And Giroux thought: why not? It’s the 50th anniversary. Let’s bring it back.

The result is the Lancia Pu+Ra Montecarlo, and it’s equal parts retro postcard and sci-fi sketch. Think wedge-like profile, blacked-out nose, and T-shaped LED lights — the kind of thing you’d expect to see in Turin’s design studios after a long lunch of Barolo and cigarettes. Only here, the nostalgia has been filtered through Blender, Photoshop, and AI, which is either blasphemy or genius, depending on whether you still have Paolo Pininfarina posters on your bedroom wall.

From some angles, it looks like a glassier, sleeker Stratos. The front chin juts out with proper exotic swagger, while the roof gets circular cutouts like it’s been moonlighting as a Bauhaus experiment. Around the back, there’s a discreet spoiler, razor-thin lights, and a diffuser that seems to whisper: don’t worry, I’ll look fantastic in Martini stripes.

Speaking of which, Giroux didn’t just stop at the showroom fantasy. He built a full-blown Alitalia-liveried rally version, complete with gold alloys, swollen arches, and more intakes than a Dyson showroom. It’s a clear nod to the 037, but updated with LED daggers, a ducktail spoiler, and a diffuser that screams “I’m ready for Monte Carlo 1983, where’s my group B entry form?”

Of course, there’s one small problem: it doesn’t actually exist. No drivetrain, no chassis, no Stellantis green light. It’s a sketch, a digital passion project. Giroux hints at an EV layout — slim proportions, sealed surfaces — but he’s also teased exhausts and vented rear ends like it’s packing a mid-mounted turbo four. The truth is, it could be anything from a hairdryer to a hydrogen rocket.

And therein lies the tragedy. Because while Lancia is busy selling a single Ypsilon to pensioners and planning crossovers that’ll inevitably wear more chrome than soul, this Pu+Ra Montecarlo proves the brand could still build something with fire in its belly. Something worthy of the badge that once conquered rally stages and lit up Italian piazzas.

Will it happen? No. Stellantis has more spreadsheets than sports car dreams, and Lancia needs stable sales before Turin’s accountants let the word “coupe” into the boardroom. But still, Giroux’s vision is a reminder: the Montecarlo isn’t just history. It’s a challenge. A dare. A stylish ghost from the ’70s tapping Stellantis on the shoulder and whispering: remember what you used to be?

Source: Lancia