Lancia Gamma sedan, large, luxurious and a wee bit overweight, but a fast Autobahncruiser nevertheless.

Quite remarkably, FIAT management had chosen the new prestigious Gamma Berlina to be a “two box car”, and thus a car that did not have a real trunk in the traditional sense. While this trend reflected Italian car design of the period (first introduced at Lancia with the heavily FIAT based Boano-designed new Beta Berlinas) it was a characteristic that was not shared - with the exception of the Rover and the Citroen CX - by any of the other luxury car manufacturers of the era, such as Mercedes Benz, BMW or Jaguar. The Gamma line of cars was designed by Pininfarina, the Berlina being a clear descendent of a BLMC 1100 that Pininfarina designed years earlier, whereas the Coupe had lines that would be rediscovered in the Cadillac Allante. The fact that the Gamma was a 4-cylinder car did not make it a strong contender either in a luxury car market dominated by 6 cylinders.

 

The last of the famous Fessia flat fours. Was the Gamma Lancia's Cadillac Allante?

By the mid-1980’s the Lancia Gamma line of cars was retired and from then onwards the flat-four engine became history as far as it concerned the make of Lancia. Those who wanted to enjoy a drive in Italian cars with water-cooled horizontally opposed cylinder engines had from then onwards to rely on the little Alfasuds or else on the Ferrari Boxers and Testarossas - which may explain the success of Subarus and - much later - the water-cooled Porsches!