Lancia: Two Men Honor a Dying Italian Legend

A few decades back, I was in lust with a Lancia Scorpion. Go ahead and Google a picture, I daresay I will be justified in my hopeless devotion. The late ‘70s two-seater – dubbed the Monte Carlo in Europe – seemed to be a mix of so many desirable machines. Its rakish Pininfarina body made it look like a smaller DeLorean, and its mid-engined four-banger gave it the cat-like grace of Ferrari Dino.

Or so I imagined. The car’s brief sales life in the U.S. lasted from just 1976 to 1977. In the ‘80s, I’d spot the occasional Lancia Monte Carlo on the streets of Rome or Paris, but never caught a ride. So the car to this day leaves me with a sense of mystery, just as it leaves most car enthusiasts I talk to saying, “a Lan-whut?”

Lancia Scorpion

But Bruce Trenery and Chris Christiansen are not your average gearheads. For starters, the latter works at the former’s exotic car consignment emporium, Fantasy Junction, an automobile enthusiast’s dream palace if there ever was one. Located in Emeryville, Calif., just across the bay from San Francisco, the non-descript warehouse is routinely stuffed with poster-worthy machines.

Today, I’m surrounded by a stunning array of Italian finery, including a $9.95-million 1959 Ferrari 250 GT LWB California Spyder, a futuristic $195,000 1965 Alfa Romeo Sprint Speciale and a sign-of-the-Wall-Street-times $400,000 1985 Lamborghini Countach 5000S. Heady stuff – and yet Trenery and Christiansen are most eager to talk about… Lancias.

Perhaps that’s especially important now, given that Fiat Chrysler boss Sergio Marchionne all but killed off Lancia, announcing last year that only its Ypsilon model was worth saving, and only for the Italian market. This from a marque that brought us the positively futuristic and winning rally machine, the Lancia Stratos, piloted by the incomparable Sandro Munari.

But so blow the winds of automotive change. In the meantime, these two Bay Area men have been collecting, restoring and just fussing over these cars for half a century. When I asked Christiansen what Lancias he has owned, his matter-of-fact reply was: “one Aurelia B24S convertible, two Aurelia B24 Spiders, three B20S, three Appias, two Flaminia sedans, three Flavias, coupe, a convertible and a sedan, four Fulvias, one Aprillia, one Adera, one Stratos, four Lancia watches and too many books. Oh, yes and a few parts.”

Trenery and his Lancia B24S convertible.

Trenery, who met Christiansen in the ‘70s and who lured him to Fantasy Junction’s team in the ‘90s, calls his buddy “the ultimate Lancia freak.” But that’s not to say he doesn’t have his own voluminous tales of Lancia love. His starts one sunny day in Berkeley, Calif., in the mid-60s, when a teenage Trenery was driving around in his prized $460 Porsche 356 Continental.

“Driving by a local sports car lot, I noticed a beautiful Italian convertible,” he says. “It was a Lancia B24S Aurelia convertible, the first I had ever seen, with an alloy V6 hemi coupled to a transaxle with DeDion rear suspension. This didn’t mean as much to me as how it felt looking over the beautiful hood scoop and listening to the wonderful mechanical sounds of the car.”