Lanciana and Friends

One of the new articles that Snyder inserted was one written by another acquaintance, Ed Godshalk, no stranger to these pages and a world-renown Cisitalia expert. But I didn’t realize that Ed was also a Lancisiti; however the article focused on his 2007 accident with a B20 which was found to have been caused by faulty rear suspension bracket. He and his passenger walked away but Ed wanted to make sure that other owners were aware of the weak weld inherent with the model.

Ed Godshalk - My wife and I moved to Massachusetts in 1985 and I purchased my first Aurelia in 1988 from Jim Simpson (owner of the two Lancia Blue Rays at the time. Simpson's cars are also featured in the Snyder Lancia reprint) who at the time was running Contemporary Classics in Texas. I had Jim restore the body and paint the car and I did all the mechanical work under guidance from Carter Hendricks and Dick Buckingham. Credit Ed Godshalk

Godshalk recently emailed me about the B20. “That car (B20S-1027) went like gang busters and I enjoyed driving it over 26 years against Aston Martins, Ferraris, Jags, Alfas, etc. Having owned a number of Alfas (three Giulietta Veloces – Spider and Sprint , ’67 GTV, ’75 Alfetta’, and a 1986 Spider), I found that the 4th series B20 was superior to the production four cylinder Alfas (excepting special cars like GTA’s) and could outrun V6 Milanos on challenging surfaces.”

The day of the accident I had just given a harsh lesson to a modern Mini in how good an Aurelia is on back country roads. A friend, who is a good driver, was in the Mini and we left him behind while driving about 7/10’s in the B20 owing to the rough roads, rail road tracks, etc. where modern suspension systems do not always handle very well vs. the Aurelia that was bred for that sort of thing.

The accident was a result of the right rear leaf spring shackle weld failing. Once the leaf spring broke loose the car effectively had rear wheel steering and was impossible to control. Amazingly my friend Rick Warner and I survived with only minor scratches. As a chassis engineer told me “when suspension fails everyone hits the wall.” Credit Ed Godshalk

A few more pages down was another new article, this one from the April 2014 edition of Hemmings Sports and Exotic Car magazine which profusely featured Jim Steerman’s remarkable Aurelia Spyder which he bought in 1993. The Steerman’s are true fanatcis as well; father and son also own the Lancia Dagrada we featured previously, and son James sold every one of the Aurelia Tech Pubs he had left through VeloceToday.

Moon's art often adorned Lanciana; here a self portrait of himself in his Aurelia.

And of course the indomitable Howard Moon, who was editor of Lanciana from 1968 to 1975 and contributed 1977 edition was printed in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Aurelia. His article “The Aurelia Mystique” kicks off the Snyder reprint and remains as good an explanation of the Aurelia as any. This is followed by another classic commentary of his trip from Springfield, Illinois to Washington, D.C. with a low mileage Aurelia Convertible in 1977, a voyage which had all the elements of an Italian opera. He decided to do the drive with the top down as, “…having been last erect in 1972 and six hours of persuasion with crowbars and hydraulic jacks on its badly bent frame confirmed it had shrunk far away from the windshield anchors. Collectors, I suspect, pay more for open cars because they are no compelled to drive them. Experience indicated that up to about 45 mph, a light shower would become an exquisite and maddening variation of the Chinese water torture, the raindrops drilling with exaggerated momentum into the forehead, then draining into the eye sockets, pausing thoughtfully to fog up eyeglass lenses on the way..”

It was too bad Road & Track already had Henry Manney III for Moon would have been a delightful substitute.

Moon (glasses) giving a lecture on the Aurelia at a show in Reston Va in 1996. Photo by Mary Decker Vack

Not in the Snyder reprint but forever ensconced in the Lanciana files and written for the 20th Anniversary of the Aurelia in 1971, was a Moon piece entitled “Dementia Aureliana”, a humorous and all-too-true psychological look at the foibles of those addicted to Aurelias. He writes, somewhat autobiographically, “The Aurelian desires the company of his own kind, because his fellow sufferers are the only human beings with whom he has now anything in common….he cannot trust them and is openly fearful that they will make off with his tools, photographs, brochures, or headlight rims.” We’ll have a full reprint of the article in a future edition of VeloceToday.

Moon's humor and wit knew no bounds. Here he lampoons the announcement of of the new Lancia Management under Fiat.

In those days when the Mac and desktop publishing were just a twinkle in Steve Job’s eye, Moon was an expert at line drawing, cut and paste techniques, oddly crafted fonts and cartoons that were all created with a typewriter, a sharp razor, good ruler, glue and a lot of patience. They were at once amateurish and crude, and yet erudite, creative and always delightful. He had earlier spent two years at the Pratt Institute in New York, and put his training to good use.

But more to the point, the Lanciana’s were the product of their editors, who were often as quirky, unconventional and intelligent as the cars they wrote of. While the slick, professional car magazines of the day were always well done, they nonetheless often failed to project the enthusiasm, knowledge, experience and insight that could be found in club pubs like Lanciana. And therein lies their charm.

How to order. For now, the best advice is to contact Steve Snyder directly. He’ll tell you how to send money, and you might even want to join the American Lancia Club in the process. Or order from Steve Snyder, 2365 Pline Knoll #5, Walnut Creek, CA 94595. Also, Logan Gray of Vintage Motorbooks will have copies for sale in Monterey this week at Automobilia (12-13 Aug) and at Concorso Italiano (16 Aug).