Any fan of Engines can pretty much pinpoint when it contracted the strange disease that makes us wince at metal and rubber objects. In my case, it’s an age-old memory of visiting my best friend as a child. I had several toys, but my attention went to these models his older brother, beautiful, shiny, much bigger than the toy cars my father bought me every Saturday morning. What struck me was a supercar straight out of a sci-fi movie, sleek, very low, with a barely visible spoiler and a livery reminiscent of the Italian flag. When my parents managed to buy a color TV, I realized that this car had just made its mark rally history, who dominates far and wide and deserves an honorable place in the golden book of the happiest models of all time. Other cars have won my heart over the years, but these Start Stratos it stays there, unbeatable, as it goes for the first affair in middle school, the first kiss stolen from the gardens.
A few decades later, somewhere in west London, while thrashing about on my big scooter in the pouring rain, I found her in front of me and almost fell to the ground in surprise. The last thing you expect on your way to the editorial office is to find yourself in front of one of the most iconic cars of all time. As soon as I sat down at my desk, I talked about it with my English colleagues. In London, the metropolis par excellence, you often see dream cars, but the usual big oligarchs, gold-plated Lamborghinis, stuff like that, not cult cars, but produced in a few hundred units. The answer my colleagues gave me stunned me and opened up a world I never thought possible. “It wasn’t an original, it will definitely be a kit car”. I knew that the British might be the only country in the world that surpasses us in terms of passion for engines, but who would have ever thought that there are people who, in order to own the car of their dreams, if you build it yourself. This is the fascinating world of homebuilt supercars and the enthusiasts who dedicate their lives to them.
Build a car at home?
It may seem odd in a country with an impeccable motoring tradition like England, but ‘on the right side of the Channel’, which they call, with typically British irony, ‘petrol heads’, have the tri-colored arrow that dominated the World Cup from 1974 to , never forgotten rally 1976. The extreme design, son of the pen of Bertone, combined with Dino’s Ferrari V6, created one of the most successful cars of all time, part of that legendary thread that leads from the Fulvia HF to the legendary 037 to the Delta S4 to the Integrale. As is the case with rally prototypes, getting your hands on a street version of those built to receive FIA homologation is an almost impossible proposition. That 492 Lancia Stratos Stradale they quickly disappeared from circulation and change hands only after checking for several zeros, no less than half a million from euros. What to do when you’re just thinking about that special car and you have time and money to waste? In England you can order a kit and assemble it yourself at home in your garage.
In 1987, David Jowsey, a motor geek from North Yorkshire, decided to while away the time by making his dream come true. He bought a kit and started building his own Stratos at home. After reading an article in a trade journal, he paid £3750 and had a number of boxes delivered containing an Allora kit by Handmade Cars, one of 13 produced by the small English company. “If I don’t do it now, I’ll never have the courage to do it. I borrowed some money and took the risk.” When he found the garage full of fiberglass, steel spars, parts of the dashboard, glass and the mountain of necessary screws and bolts, he lost heart for a moment. His father, who owned a body shop, looked at him like he was crazy. “When it arrived I never thought it could become a car. It was just the frame and several sheets of gray fiberglass.” As it took shape, even the father became enthusiastic about the crazy venture and helped out from time to time.
What worried him, however, was the fact that there was no engine. Companies don’t do this by accident: they want to give customers the option of assembling the motor they prefer. If you’ve got the money to burn, you can check out an original Ferrari Dino engine, which could cost you a fortune. Most Stratos lovers choose a V6 Alfa Romeo, which with some modifications can have the same grain as the Ferrari. However, David chose to stay true to the original and opted for the two-litre twin-cam from the Lancia Beta, the same one that had been fitted to the Stratos HF before Enzo Ferrari allowed the use of 500 Ferrari engines, once the dino went out of production. . He bought a crashed Beta for just £150 and removed everything from the engine to the wiring to the number plate, which he passed on to his prototype. The engine went through the hands of a local tuner and produced around 160 hp, enough to give it some liveliness. English motorization was very relaxed back then and registered their Stratos as a two-door Lancia Beta sedan, a car that didn’t even exist. In the 1990s it was decided to review the homebuilt car issue and the DVLA decided that if there were enough donor car components, you could register the kit car as such. His dream car for motorization therefore remains an Allora Lancia replica, a classic car that has been tax-free since 2018. David doesn’t care much: he has his dream car in the garage and even now at the age of 60 he wouldn’t sell it for all the gold in the world.
Better than the original?
Faced with the impossibility of sourcing a real Stratos Stradale, several English companies have committed to producing kits to make it themselves. Many of these companies have gone bankrupt, but some are still in business, offering their own “modern reinterpretations” of this great Italian classic. This means that there are far more home-built replicas than real cars, and not just in England. You’ll find them on the road, but especially at races dedicated to the great classics of motorsport, from the Le Mans Classic to the very popular Goodwood Festival across the Channel. On the other hand, why risk wrecking a car that costs half a million when you can make the exact same thing at home? David said he saw an original Stradale at Silverstone and couldn’t tell it from his own. The manufacturers of the various kits go even further and claim that their replicas are even better than the original. Journalists from the British specialist magazine Autocar examined one of these replicas and came up with rather flattering results.
So you also wanted to build a Stratos yourself? Unfortunately, things are much more complicated in our latitudes. The actual idea of the “kit car” is practically unknown to us given the extreme complexity of the homologation rules. Apart from the saga of some small manufacturers like Puma from Rome, who transformed Volkswagen Beetles with aggressive lines into “dune buggies”, the phenomenon remained very limited. The problem is that kit cars are considered unique and therefore have to deal with the complex and expensive processes required by traditional manufacturers for each model. If you don’t have a dedicated legal department, it’s best to leave them alone. For those living in the UK, the problem obviously doesn’t even arise: the rules of the DVLA are stricter than in the far west of the ’90s, but kit cars are a sufficiently settled reality to guarantee them proper treatment. Not easy, but can you really put a number on the dreams you had as a child?
Out of curiosity I looked at the pages of two of the English companies that make kits specifically for the Lancia Stratos and I was quite surprised. It’s not every day that you can choose so many features of the car you want to buy. Produced by LB Specialist Cars, the STR is defined as a car “built in the spirit of the Stratos but usable every day with no reliability issues and at a fraction of the price of the original”. You have a choice of a Stradale or a real GP4, complete with Alitalia livery and rally headlights, but either way there’s not much of the original. Integrated roll cage, modern brakes, powerful engines, improved tubular space frame, state-of-the-art suspension, only the rims have some problems, the original Lancias are nowhere to be found. On the other hand, if you can design the car however you want, why not choose everything? How much can this modern reinterpretation of a great classic cost you? Not a little, at least £65,000 – still significantly less than an original Stratos.
The same goes for another fairly popular kit, the HF 3000, which is produced by Falcon. Also in this case you can choose the engine, from the naturally aspirated or turbocharged 2-litre Lancia (I imagine that of the theme) or the performance of the 3-litre V6 of the Alfa 164 up to the top of the top, a Ferrari V6 or V8 as long as you can find it without having to sell your house. Also in this case you can choose between street body and Alitalia GP4: the company boasts that the fairings are so precise that they can be used as spare parts for the “real” Stratos, but we cannot guarantee these claims. For the chassis, Hawk didn’t want to “reinterpret” that of the Lancia, but to copy it in every respect, using better materials that make it stiffer and lighter. The racing roll cage is included should you fancy racing your Stratos at the track. The suspension has stock geometry but is tailored for both the street and the track. In this case, the rims are not a problem, since Hawk had light-alloy copies built that are true to the original. Worried that mounting your HF 3000 will be too difficult? No problem, Hawk Cars provides its customers with a dedicated service to help them should they run into trouble. how long will it take you No less than 300 hours, in their opinion, an extremely optimistic estimate. For someone like me who is completely denied with his hands, one life might not be enough.
Is it worth? would you do it I honestly don’t know what to tell you. Although they have dreamed of driving a Stratos all their lives, these are always replicas, modern cars that resemble the original but lack the mystique, the aura of invincibility of the car that made rally history. I don’t know if this is due to fetishism or if it’s just an Englishman who gets the idea to spend weeks and blatantly building a car in his garage by himself. As tempting as I am, I prefer to move on dream of this model from the colors of the flag that I loved so much as a child. They say the worst thing that can happen to you is meeting your heroes. To me, that applies to both people and cars.