History/driving impressions originally published in AutoWeek February 25, 2002; republished by the author

The Lancia Flaminia Berlina had an Italianate grille but a wraparound windshield right out of Detroit.

Many Lancia Flaminia Berlinas, like this one, had a two-tone paint combination.

The Lancia Flaminia Berlina had crisp rear fenders, and the unique feature of inside and outside rear wipers, meant to combat fogging of the rear window.

 

The Via Flaminia, one of the great Roman roads, was laid down by the Roman Consul Flaminius in 220 B.C., and along its measured stones Rome’s legions marched northward to battle the Teutonic tribes. In 1958, Lancia introduced the Flaminia Berlina, the biggest, most luxurious sedan from Italy, and as such a rival to the hordes from Mercedes-Benz.

The Flaminia was a successor to the Aurelia (named after another famous Roman road, which goes to France) but it was significantly larger. This sleek four-door sedan, much more elegant than its contemporaries from Mercedes, rode on a 113-inch wheelbase and was 191 inches long. The design was by Pinin Farina (then still two words), and it had a number of American influences, including a wraparound windshield that could have been from a Pontiac. The grill was Italianate, but the headlights had heavy chrome bezels. The roofline, meanwhile, swept into crisply crested rear fenders, almost fins, the terminated in vertical taillights blended into the rear bumper – straight from a Detroit sketchbook. Frequently presented in two-tone paint, the roof and rear fender top contrasting with the rest of the car, it was an elegant blending of Old and New World design.

The Flaminia did have a couple of oddities. One was to pair of wipers for the rear window, for inside and out, an early Italian answer to rear defogging. A tap on a dash button would cycle these vacuum-powered wipers once. Vacuum also opened and closed the flipper-style rear vent windows.

The Flaminia inherited the Aurelia’s V-6 engine concept, complete with its unique 90-degree twist rocker arms. It was larger, however, with increases in both bore and stroke and room to grow. Displacement was at first 2458 cc, was a single downdraft two-barrel carburetor. It would later grow to 2.8 liters, with some applications also getting three two-barrel carburetors. Standard transmission was a four-speed manual transaxle with column shifting, thought to be the wave of the future (and American, too), with some produced with the German Saxomat automatic.

Lancia’s traditional sliding-pillar front suspension yielded to a more conventional double-A-arm and coil-spring arrangement. At the rear, a de Dion axle with semi-elliptic springs was used. With only the compact all-aluminum V6 upfront, the Flaminia was tail-heavy, and contemporary road test noted that it could be tail-happy as well.

The 1958 Flaminia Berlina owned by Cesare DeFeo of Mount Vernon, New York, didn’t exhibit any such tendency, perhaps due to being driven with less verve. The original engine in DeFeo’s had been replaced by a “leftover” 2.8-liter, though performance of the 3500-pound sedan could be best described as leisurely by modern standards. The 2.5-liter reportedly took 15.5 seconds to reach 60 MPH. For all the linkage necessary for the shifter to reach the transaxle, shifting was remarkably easy. Nevertheless, the Flaminia sedan’s forte was on the highway, where it still flows well with modern traffic…with its drum brakes always in mind, however.

Although the Berlina was the first Flaminia, it was followed by a number of variants, mostly coupes based on shortened versions of the unibody’s platform. Pinin Farina, Touring, Ghia and Zagato designs had wheelbases ranging from 99 inches to 108 inches. Four Flaminia Presidentiales had impressive riders, debuting on the visit of Queen Elizabeth II; another went to the Pope.

A reflection on Italy’s economy as much as the Flaminia itself, the car never reached large production numbers. The last Flaminia, a show car by Ghia, made its debut shortly after Fiat’s takeover of Lancia in 1969. Over its dozen-year lifespan, just shy of 9000 Flaminia’s were built. Only 3943 were Berlinas. The car Road & Track had called “the Rolls-Royce or Cadillac Eldorado Brougham of Italy” battled gallantly against the tribes from the North. But alas, like Rome’s legions, the Lancia is just a part of history.

Addendum: Lancia made a half-hearted attempt at selling cars in the United States but , well, basically failed. With no dedicated sales network and limited support, but Lancia was a boutique item in America, attractive to a small segment of a small segment of a small segment of the market. If the Lancia Flaminia Berlina didn’t make a dent in Europe, it didn’t stand a chance in the States.

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