Until recently, Lancia was withering away on death row, reduced since 2017 to a single model in a single market. One could almost sense hard-headed FCA chief Sergio Marchionne’s irritation as the Fiat 500-based Ypsilon continued to sell in droves.
It’s thanks only to Italian drivers’ patriotism and indifference to needless expense and the latest tech that Lancia survived for long enough to be saved by Stellantis.
Credit must go to founding Stellantis boss Carlos Tavares for appreciating Lancia’s value enough to hand the brand sufficient funding for a 10-year revival of its core model lines.
Precisely what is that inherent value, though? That’s what I’m hoping to discover, driving the new Ypsilon in Turin – home to the first factory that employed Vincenzo Lancia way back in 1898, the first site he opened under his own name and the famous Mirafiori plant, now also host to the Fiat and Lancia historic car collection.
The Ypsilon comes in Ibrida and Elettrica forms, and I’ve chosen the Elettrica, it being Lancia’s electric car. The former uses a 99bhp mild-hybrid 1.2-litre turbocharged petrol triple, the latter a 154bhp motor and a 51kWh battery.
Those specs feel very familiar because they are, from the many small cars based on Stellantis’s e-CMP platform.
The Ypsilon Elettrica drives virtually indistinguishably from a Peugeot 208 or Vauxhall Corsa EV, then. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Those cars have sold extremely well and the finer points of ride and handling aren’t priorities for many buyers in this market.
The Ypsilon is smooth, comfortable and refined on the autostrada, and in town it has a healthy reserve of power and it will round corners sharply. And if that really isn’t enough for you, exciting news: there’s a rally-inspired HF version coming.
What really sets everyday cars apart, prices aside, is design. The reason one person falls in love with the Jeep Avenger may well be why another orders an Alfa Romeo Junior instead, despite their identical specs.
Lancia has always been a design brand and, in this coming era of increasing mechanical and technical similarity, going all in on that appears to be an ideal strategy.
“Many people came expressly to ask me to work for Lancia. There was passion in their eyes, and when I told them about the possible plans for the rebirth of this glorious brand, they lit up,” creative chief Jean-Pierre Ploué (designer of such favourites as the Mk1 Renault Twingo, Citroën C6 and DS 3) recently told Italian publication Auto & Design.
Of the four design pillars his Turin studio team defined, ‘meaningful’ perhaps isn’t the easiest to identify in the Ypsilon, but ‘iconic’ I can see in the Stratos-inspired tail-lights and, while ‘consistent’ and ‘eclectic’ might seem to clash, the exterior sparks interest in its many details – most unusually the, erm, Y-front – without becoming a hotchpotch.
Same inside, where unusual details abound: knurled gold air-vent adjusters, slices of wood, an art deco dashboard pattern and a table atop the centre console – whose round shape is replicated in the doors and ‘Sala Hub’ behind the touchscreen (short for Sound Air Light Augmentation and meant to simplify the digital experience, apparently). And then there are the rust-coloured, boiserie-patterned velvet seats – simply fabulous.
The Ypsilon’s official range is 250 miles, so I expect to finish the 160-mile drive to my hotel in Turin with plenty in reserve, but the number on the display plunges alarmingly as I cruise at 80mph, such that I have to rise early the next morning to get a big charge.
Thankfully, Zap-Map reveals that there are many chargers in this industrial city, and the Plentitude network (run by Italian oil giant Eni) offers both an easy app sign-up process and a slick-looking ‘CCS Hypercharger’.
The rate races to 89kW (the Ypsilon’s limit is 100kW) and all is well – until suddenly it isn’t. The charging process terminates halfway for no obvious reason and fails to restart.
Then the car bongs loudly and says: “Electric traction system failure: stop the vehicle, see user manual.” Ah.
There’s work to be done then, and the technicians tell me later they could find no fault with the car. When I visit the FCA Heritage Hub, the guide suggests some Italians aren’t too hot on the Ypsilon either, unconvinced by the design and annoyed that it’s built in Spain.
It’s evident that rebuilding Lancia is going to be difficult in many ways – but when you see the history the brand has and the passion it still evokes, you realise why it’s an effort worth making.
Reviving Lancia is blessed. But, reading about the charging fault remind old Lancia reliability problems and the omnipresent "Fix It Again Tony"
Alfa has 3 cars now, none of which are truly competitive against the Germans. A Giulia vs. a 3/C/A4 isn't even a fair fight. It can't match the Germans' quality, variety of engine choices, efficiency, or desirability. The Stelvio suffers from the same flaws against the X3/GLC/Q5.
Then there's Maserati, which sells a bunch of ridiculously overpriced cars that are neither beautiful to look at, phenomenal to drive, or close to being as reliable as the German, Japanese or Korean luxury brands. The Grecale is a complete joke. It's X3 sized, has X3-baiting power output, but is priced against well equipped GLEs/X5s or even Q7s. Want more than the corporate Fiat Chrysler 4-cylinder? That'll be 6-figures for the V6 Grecale. An X3M undercuts it on price by a huge margin. This is a compact crossover that is 97% Stelvio under the skin, which is about to be retired. Why do Alfa and Maserati both still exist? One of the two should have been killed off. Trying to develop 2 competitive luxury performance car marques at the same time from the ground up, essentially, is not possible when neither marque is that desirable.
How it is now, neither company gets enough resources (money) to design, engineer and ultimately produce a full line of cars that is priced appropriately, sized appropriately, reliable, great to drive, and full of the best modern technology available.
Now they're seemingly going to try and bring in a third Italian luxury brand, which has been on death's door so many times. Outside of Italy, Lancia is a ghost brand. It doesn't even exist. It may be known for the old Delta hatchback or Stratos, but that's about the last time they made a decent vehicle. In recent memory they've sold nothing more than rebadged Chryslers that nobody wanted. A badge engineered Peugeot hatchback isn't going to be the brand salvation they hope and need.
If it wasn't for the money brought in by Jeep, RAM, and to a lesser degree, the former PSA brands, all of these Italian marques would be so unprofitable the company would be bankrupt. If Stellantis wants to actually finally compete against the Germans, they need to focus on one brand and that's it. Build one full line of the best products they can come up with. Stop cutting corners with badge engineered crap nobody wants. Design the best looking cars, make them drive better than the equivalent BMW, ride better than a Mercedes or Audi, and have a wide range of power output that cover each segment from entry level to M/AMG/RS. If they could undercut the Germans on price by a few grand, it would help even more. Reliability has got to be the biggest focus for any Italian brand to succeed. Offer a longer warranty, include some standard three year maintenance plan, and offer a car for each segment the Germans compete in ranging from a smaller family hatch to a sedan sized against the 3/C/A4, and the breadwinners: an SUV in each size from X1 to X7. Anything larger than the small hatch and X1-sized SUV should be built on a modular RWD platform that is unrelated to any of the current cars they sell. On the mainstream side, Fiat needs to do about the same thing... Offer a normal, non-retro car for each class that VW competes in. There is a lot of sharing that could be done with the PSA cars, but the Fiat brand needs to have a different flavor, and still offer a wider breadth of models.
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