eight-pot Alfa or Maserati at the end of a hard day’s
racing and potter home in a 35hp Lancia. As skilled,
professional drivers they were well aware that the
ability to travel quickly across country was born of
more than just sheer horsepower. And like so many
other Lancias, both before and since, the Augusta had
those qualities in spades.
Around 14,000 Augustas in all were built between
1933 and 1938, along with over 3000 separate chassis
for independent
coachbuilders’ creations.
However, although designed
by Carrozzeria Pinin Farina,
this 1934 second-series
Augusta was actually built by
the Lancia factory and is
something of a rarity.
“There are not many of
them left,” says owner Doug
Martin. “There are still quite a
few coachbuilt ones but
there don’t seem to be many
factory ones that survived.”
In fact, it’s one of maybe
three such cabriolets in the
UK. A retired accountant
with an eclectic taste in
toys, Doug has owned it for
about five years. It’s his first
Lancia, following an interestingly varied selection of
classic and racing cars.
“My midlife crisis was an Elva 200 race car,” he
recalls. “I bought it when I was 50, rebuilt it fully and
raced it for a while.” Then came an Alfa Giulia Spider
with which he also competed, winning the Giulietta Cup
at Alfa’s centenary celebration event at Monza in 2010.
Two pre-war machines followed, a Lagonda Rapier and
a 1922 Fiat 501S, in which he did the Mille Miglia.
Now, the Augusta shares a garage with a moreGood Enough
For Tazio
This elegant Pinin Farina drophead appealed to
racing car drivers like Tazio Nuvolari when it
came to road wheels. Here’s why
Story by Simon Park
Photography by Michael WardA
s silent as a good butler, as smooth-
running as a well-ordered household. Thus
did London Lancia distributors Kevill-Davies
& March proclaim the virtues of the first
‘small’ Lancia, the Augusta, some 85 years
ago. Said virtues might not have quite the same
resonance or relevance today, but back in the 1930s
that was obviously considered a killer sales pitch.
Unfortunately, such accolades weren’t enough to
counteract the problem of price,
which was not far off double that
of rival models such as Fiat’s
Balilla – and that was just for the
common-or-garden saloon. It was
the price of engineering
excellence that few of its rivals
could match, but which, ultimately,
too few potential punters were
prepared to pay – an all too
familiar Lancia trope.
So Vincenzo Lancia’s
determination that his new ‘baby’
should lack none of the
sophistication and amenities found
on the larger DiLambda, Astura and
Artena models was, ultimately, its
undoing. In the mid-1930s, your
average man in the Italian street
neither needed nor expected
sliding pillar independent front suspension, unitary
monocoque construction, ultra-compact overhead-cam
V4 engine, Lockheed hydraulic brakes and the
exceptional structural rigidity assured by electric
welding techniques (this was the first European car to
so benefit), all of which came at a price.
Conversely, it was just such features which endeared
the Augusta to the likes of Tazio Nuvolari and several
of his racing chums – far from average men – who were
quite happy to park their 200hp-plus supercharged,