“I knew we had the car fixed when we won the Tour de France in September. Because the Stratos was quite light at the front it was more nervous on very fast roads, so we fitted a front spoiler and a little wing at the rear to help us at the racetracks. I remember the race at Montjuich in Barcelona, a circuit I had never seen before. The car was good on that tight track and we were second instead of being behind all the proper racing cars. The Tour was a long event, which took place on small roads and went through the night every other day. The Stratos was not built for comfort or relaxation, yet it was really good on rallies like Monte Carlo and Corsica. If you took a modern rally car and tried to do the old Corsica rally – 750 miles in 24 hours, almost non-stop – you would be finished. Not with a Stratos – it was a joy to drive. Once we had sorted the rear suspension, you could set it up to handle just the way you wanted. By the time it had the 24-valve engine, it was brilliant. We went from maybe 260-270bhp to 330, with much better torque and much improved response. It was good before, but now it was perfect.”
Munari did 36 international rallies in the Stratos and won 14 of them, including three Monte Carlos. But there are some regrets: the Safari and RAC Rally.
“On the RAC in 1974, I had just come from two unpractised gravel rallies in North America instead of, as normal, from Corsica. I was driving the best I ever did on the RAC, but from the middle of the rally Cesare Fiorio [his team boss] was telling me to be careful because we needed points. Of course, he was right – my engine failed in Corsica 10 days later. We finished third on the RAC, but I would have liked the chance to really go for the win.
Munari got that sinking feeling at the ’75 Safari, where punctures stifled what was rally-winning pace
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“I was the one who pushed so hard for us to go to the Safari in 1975. I knew the car was very strong, and so fast that you could go afford to go slowly where necessary. Our problem was with tyres. They would overheat because of the speeds we were doing and, even without touching anything, a sidewall would fail. We had maybe 15 tyres blow on that rally.
“We could still have won, but I had three punctures right near the end. The Lancia plane was on the ground, so there was no chance to fix it. I drove 30km on the rim and then Lofty [Drews, his co-driver] had to go in a taxi to get a spare. We were still second at the finish and that result put Lancia into the lead of the championship. But all the Italian press could write about was that we lost the Safari.”
Björn Waldegård spent two years with the Stratos, notching up victories in rallies as diverse as Sweden and San Remo.
“To drive a Stratos is not at all difficult, but to drive it fast, you have to be aggressive,” he explains. “It handled very well in spite of a layout that has so much of the weight biased towards the rear. The first time I drove it, I was a bit afraid because of a previous bad experience with the Porsche 914/6 on the 1971 Monte Carlo. [He didn’t like the car, but still finished joint third]. But it was nothing like that, it was more like the 911.
Munari taking things to the limit at Monte Carlo ’75
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“I learned that you had to go into the corners hard to get the performance out of it. At first you felt that you would lose it completely, but it seemed to slide to a limit and then it was okay. It was a little bit like a modern 4wd car, which will put you off the road if you lift off mid-corner. It did not pay to be frightened with the Lancia Stratos, especially on gravel or snow.
“The traction was fantastic for its day. It is difficult to compare it with the Porsches I drove, because they had a maximum of 200bhp while the Stratos was 260, maybe 280. And the Stratos used so much wider wheels and tyres, so there was better grip. From the rear, the car looked all tyre.
“The first time in Sweden, when we won, the car was fantastic, but the second year [1976] it came with the big brakes, which meant that the track was much wider. So I had a real problem in the fresh snow trying to follow in the tracks of the other cars.