The Greatest Lancia
The creation of the Lambda a century ago represents a major turning point in Lancia’s history, not only for its commercial success but also because it set a new technological paradigm for the Marque as a whole.
Legend has it that Vincenzo Lancia’s idea for a chassis-less automobile came to him on a boat trip, observing how the boat’s hull was a strong, self-supporting structure. Although Lancia filed the first patent for a unitary-construction car in March of 1919, work on what would become the Lambda didn’t start in earnest until early 1921, when Vincenzo Lancia first told his technical staff his intention to create a car like no other.
Although the Lancia Lambda pioneered the unitary construction concept, its structure doesn’t actually resemble a modern steel unibody, as the technology to build such a thing did not quite exist yet.
Instead, the Lambda’s structure is a skeleton made of 2 mm thick pressed steel elements: the two sides with cutouts for the doors, the front bulkhead, and a series of transverse elements united by a transmission tunnel, which acted as a stressed member. Holes were cut on non-stressed areas to reduce weight where possible. The resulting structure not only was much more rigid than anything…
