Vincenzo Lancia - racing driver and engineer

Founder of ground-breaking car maker

Vincenzo Lancia in 1908, at the wheel
of a Fiat car at the Targa Florio race

Vincenzo Lancia, the founder of one of the most important car manufacturers in the history of Italy’s automobile industry, died on this day in 1937 in Turin.

He was only 55 years old and had suffered a heart attack, his unexpected death coming just as the aerodynamic Lancia Aprilia, second only to the 1922 Lambda among Lancia cars to have a profound impact on auto design across the world, was about to go into full production.

Vincenzo, who worked with the brilliant designer Battista 'Pinin' Farina in the later part of his career, is regarded as one of the three foundational figures of Italian car making, alongside Fiat founder Giovanni Agnelli, who was the first to manufacture cars on an industrial scale, and Enzo Ferrari, who led the way in Italy’s sports car culture.

Italy has a long tradition of stylish high-performance cars, with Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, Alfa Romeo and Lancia recognised as the standard bearers.

The Lancia company was founded in 1906, Vincenzo having gained experience working for Fiat, for whom he was a test driver and often drove their cars in races.

Vincenzo Lancia - often called Censin - was born in August 1881 in Fobello, a small village in a mountain valley in northern Piedmont, about 18km (11 miles) from the border with Switzerland and 26km (16 miles) west of Lago Maggiore.

Thanks to his father, Giuseppe, who had been successful in the food canning industry, the family was comfortably off. His father had ambitions for his son to build a steady career in accountancy or the law. He studied bookkeeping at the Turin Technical School.

Yet, as industrialisation began to expand rapidly in Italy, Vincenzo was increasingly interested in machines and the engineers who built them.

By chance, an opportunity arose for him when his father agreed to rent some property he owned in Turin to Giovanni Ceirano, a pioneering bicycle and early automobile builder, who needed premises to open a workshop.

Vincenzo eventually persuaded his father to let him work with Ceirano, ostensibly to further his experience in accountancy. He was listed in the company's brochure in 1898 as bookkeeper.

The 1922 Lancia Lambda was the first production
car to be built with a rigid single shell body

His real purpose was to learn about building cars, volunteering to help out as a mechanic when not needed in the office.

If he had set out somehow to put himself in the right place at the right time in the development of the Italian car industry, it could not have gone better if he had planned it.

The prototype car Ceirano produced, given the curious, English-sounding name of Welleyes, made such an impression when it was exhibited for the first time that a group of entrepreneurs looking for an opportunity to enter the fledgling automobile market proposed not only to buy the patent for the Welleyes car, but to take control of the Ceirano factory too, along with all its employees.

The company they formed in order to do this was named Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino - FIAT.

Thus, at the age of 18, Vincenzo Lancia found himself employed by Fiat. As the Welleyes became the Fiat 4 HP, the company’s first production model, Lancia’s role was as a test driver. Soon, he began competing for the company in local races, achieving his and Fiat's first victory in the 1902 Turin Sassi- Superga race.

His record as a competitive driver was mixed. He often set records for the fastest lap but his driving style was impetuous and he often failed to finish because of technical problems or minor accidents.

The Fiat 4HP, the first car to bear the Fiat name
after Vincenzo Lancia joined the new company

There were some successes, although Fiat valued him mainly for his mechanical sensitivity and his ability to diagnose faults as he drove at speed. His feedback helped refine early Fiat models.

In the meantime, in partnership with Claudio Fogolin, a friend and fellow Fiat driver, Vincenzo had in 1906 founded his own car manufacturing, under the Lancia name, in Turin, operating from a small workshop on Via Ormea, at the corner of Via Donizetti, in the south eastern part of the city.

Their first car was called the Tipo 51 or 12 HP, which Vincenzo later renamed as Alfa, beginning a tradition of naming vehicles he produced after letters in the Greek alphabet. As the business grew, the factory moved to larger premises in the Borgo San Paolo district.

Right from the start, Lancia was different from other Italian marques: it prioritised engineering innovation over mass production, emphasising precision, and mechanical elegance. Vincenzo insisted on rigorous testing and would delay production rather than release a car that did not meet his standards.

The Lambda, which first appeared in 1922, was almost certainly his most important contribution to automotive history. Its monocoque construction, combining the body shell and chassis in one rigid unit, was a world first in production cars, as was its independent front suspension.

Lancia’s conceptual leap in the way the Lambda was made brought major improvements in handling and safety and influenced car design across Europe, setting the template for modern vehicle construction. The monocoque body became the global standard for passenger cars.

The innovative, aerodynamic Lancia Aprilia was
about to go into production when Vincenzo died

Vincenzo’s personal prestige grew with the reputation of his cars. He was instrumental, as a high-profile supporter, in the construction of the Monza race track, at which he laid the foundation stone in 1922. In 1930, he joined forces with a group of other industrialists to form the coachbuilding company called Carrozzeria Pinin Farina, headed by the car designer Battista ‘Pinin’ Farina, which was to become synonymous with Italian sports cars and influenced the design of countless luxury and family cars across the world.

Lancia teamed up with Pinin Farina to work on his second ground-breaking car, the Aprilia, which was just weeks away from going into production when Vincenzo died. The Aprilia was one of the first cars designed using a wind tunnel, its streamlined body achieving record low drag. The Aprilia also featured four pillarless doors, a narrow-angle V4 engine and independent suspension.

Vincenzo Lancia was a contradictory character, according to those who knew him. A jovial bon viveur away from work, a music lover who was good company, he was a perfectionist in his professional role, intensely driven and willing to work long hours to achieve his goals. Some say these traits may have contributed to his premature demise.

After his death, a funeral was held in Turin, after which he body was taken back to Fobello and laid to rest in the family tomb at the village’s small cemetery.

The running of the Lancia business was taken over by his son, Gianni, and Gianni’s mother, Adele, who had been Vincenzo’s secretary. They hired Vittorio Jano, the Hungarian-born engineer who had made a name for himself with Alfa Romeo.

Like his father, Gianni was energetic, ambitious and imaginative and Lancia continued to produce technically brilliant cars, the Aprilia being followed by the Ardea, Aurelia and later the Flaminia.

But the company’s engineering‑first philosophy became increasingly expensive to sustain and ultimately contributed to Lancia becoming part of Fiat in 1969.

The Villa Lancia in the village of Fobello, in the High
Mastallone Valley, was the Lancia family home

Travel tip:

Fobello, where Vincenzo Lancia was born, is a small mountain village in Valsesia, in the province of Vercelli, Piedmont. It sits at about 880 metres in the High Mastallone Valley, surrounded by dense beech woods and gentle alpine slopes. The area is often called the “Emerald Basin” because of its unusually lush, sunlit green amphitheatre of forests and meadows. Fobello is part of the High Valsesia Nature Park, one of the most pristine alpine environments in Piedmont. It is a popular area for hiking and excursions through beech forests and high pastures, for wildlife observation and exploring traditional alpine hamlets, of which there are many in the vicinity. The name Fobello is traditionally linked to the Valsesian word fo, meaning beech, although some local lore suggests it may be a contraction of fondo bello, which could be taken to mean beautiful valley floor. Fobello’s parish church, the Chiesa San Giacomo dates back to 1545 but has twice been destroyed by flooding from the nearby Mastallone torrent, being rebuilt in 1931. The Palazzo Giuseppe Lancia, which Vincenzo Lancia himself built as a school building, now houses a museum dedicated to Vincenzo’s life and career. Visitors to Fobello often stay in nearby Varallo.

Find a hotel in Varallo with Hotels.com

Only an aerial photograph can capture the sheer
size of the former Fiat factory at Lingotto

Travel tip:

The automobile industry in Turin is mainly defined by Fiat, whose former headquarters in Via Nizza in the Lingotto district, where Vincenzo Lancia worked before setting up in business himself, was once the largest car factory in the world, built to a linear design by the Futurist architect Giacomo Matte Trucco. It featured a spectacular rooftop test track made famous in the Michael Caine movie, The Italian Job. The track is still in place and though Fiat’s main production centre is elsewhere, is still used to test the company’s range of electric cars. Redesigned in the 1980s by the award-winning contemporary architect Renzo Piano, it now houses concert halls, a theatre, a convention centre, shopping arcades and a hotel, as well as the Pinacoteca Agnelli art gallery and the Automotive Engineering faculty of the Polytechnic University of Turin. The Oval Lingotto, an indoor arena built for the 2006 Winter Olympics, is now used for exhibitions.