Lancia was a troubled company even at the height of its postwar racing prowess in 1953-55. But as described in Geoffrey Goldberg's new book 'Lancia and De Virgilio", gross revenues of 26.7 billion Lire in 1954 were a new record high, but production volume was modest in relation to a costly product-line to manufacture and an extensive racing programme. But Lancia received limited benefit from the postwar Marshall Plan to rebuild war-shattered Europe, much less than Fiat or Alfa Romeo. Lancia was also slow to rebuild its production facilities, and to modernise them, and in parallel with the racing programme they had also embarked upon building an expensive new factory. Italian labour troubles were always a problem, and in combination all these commitments and problems brought down the company. It's doubtful Lancia was making any profit at all.
The building programme gobbled-up material supplied by concrete contractor Italcementi, headed by Carlo Pesenti, and he eventually bought out the major motor company shareholding of the Lancia family, plus the 12 per cent owned by the Vaccarossi family. The Lancia Corse racing department was officially closed on June 1, 1955, and its hardware formally handed over to Ferrari - with new Fiat financial backing - on July 26, 1955. The handover included six D50 cars and 60 crates of spares...
DCN
Thank you for kind thoughts. A few items to add to the discussion:
- while there has been some confusion about post-war aid to Lancia, in the past year, some additional research has clarified much of this. Paolo Giusti (Lancia researcher in Torino) has been through the Lancia corporate records, recently uncovered in the Fiat Archives, and has been able to determine that Lancia applied for, and received, around $3mil of loans from the aid program. He also found information about equipment purchases and other modernization efforts, but in the wake of the growing labor unrest (1952 was difficult year), this was probably too little too late.
- DCN is right in not likely making any profit in those years. The overlap of the building effort and the racing effort was too much.
- the D50A was a revision of the D50 done by Lancia in the end of 1954, with the block and crank made a bit longer to allow wider bearings. The photo I have of the D50 crankshaft (I think on display at Maranello) is stamped "D50A".
- Ferrari revised the cars significantly, but the comment above (not DCN) of "original Lancia input was nil" is not accurate. They still ran Lancia running gear, among other things. They were modified, not remade.
- AFAIK, FIat's annual contribution of 50 million lire for five years went to Ferrari, and Lancia was not reimbursed for their costs. Also In the deal was Jano's consultancy contract, running with Lancia through 1958, although he was at Ferrari from mid-1955 on.
For a fun look at Fangio flying around Monaco in a D50/Ferrari - take a look at: ▶ Juan Manuel Fangio - YouTube from 7:50 on.
Geoff
Edited by geoffg, 11 May 2015 - 13:36.