The Lancia Stratos HF (Tipo 829), widely and more simply known as Lancia Stratos, is a sports car and rally car made by Italian car manufacturer Lancia. The HF stands for High Fidelity. It was a very successful rally car, winning the World Rally Championship in 1974, 1975 and 1976. A Bertone-designed concept car called the Lancia Stratos Zero was shown to the public in 1970, but shares little but the name and mid-engined layout with the Stratos HF version. A new car called the New Stratos was announced in 2010 which was heavily influenced by the design of the original Stratos, but was based on a Ferrari chassis and engine.
Lancia presented the Bertone-designed Lancia Stratos HF prototype at the 1971 Turin Motor Show, a year after the announcement of the Stratos Zero concept car. The prototype Stratos HF (Chassis 1240) was fluorescent red in colour and featured a distinctive crescent-shaped-wrap-around windshield providing maximum forward visibility with almost no rear visibility. The prototype had three different engines in its early development life: the Lancia Fulvia engine, the Lancia Beta engine and finally for the 1971 public announcement, the mid-mounted Dino Ferrari V6 producing 190 hp (140 kW) in road trim. The use of the Dino V6 was planned right from the beginning of the project, but Enzo Ferrari was reluctant to sign off the use of this engine in a car he saw as a competitor to his own Dino V6. After the production of the Dino car had ended the “Commendatore” (a popular nickname for Enzo Ferrari) agreed on delivering the engines for the Stratos, and Lancia then suddenly received 500 units.
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- Highly detailed plastic pieces molded in black, white and clear
- Rubber tires
- Waterslide decals
- Illustrated instructions
- Italeri Kit 3654
- Scale: 1/24
- Length: 6.06″ (154mm)
- Parts: 89
- MSRP: $39.99 USD
- Street Price $32.99 (approx)
MARKING OPTIONS:
One decal sheet with markings for 2 versions:
1) Lancia Stratos HF – Sandro Munari/Silvio Maiga – Montecarlo
Rally 1977.
2) Lancia Stratos HF- Sports car
From the workbench straight to the photo booth. This is the recently released Italeri No. 3654 1/24 Lancia Stratos HF. If memory serves me well, this kit was released back in the 80’s by Testors in their memorable yellow packaging. From that yellow box I also built a Toyota MR-2 that IIRC was from Fujimi. This kit is very simple in terms of parts count and general build. The instructions come in a small booklet style with color table and 12 steps from start to finish. In all those 12 assembly steps the model builder will have the necessary steps to build this car kit as 1977 Montecarlo Rally with Sandro Munari and Silvio Maiga on the bucket seats.
Detail on the Italeri Lancia Stratos HF is limited as the real thing is. A straightforward overall design but a head turner if you ask me. This model kit has a 2 piece hull which will help open the rear end to display the engine. The problem is that considering the intricacy of the real engine and model kit tooling of the time, what the kit provides is a failed attempt. I decided to glue both parts together, forget that there’s an ”engine” and treated it as a curbside model instead. The model requires old fashioned elbow grease. There is visible mold lines in several parts including the detail of the rims that will need to be cleaned as well as on the body itself. To create some traction for the paint, I usually sand with 1500 wet/dry sandpaper. But this model required some reshaping on the front fenders and some Vallejo Putty to get rid of some sink marks.
I painted the Italeri 1/24 Lancia Stratos HF with Tamiya TS-8 Italian Red over Tamiya white primer.
As I previously mentioned, the kit included the parts for the 1977 Montecarlo version and a great quality decal sheet to achieve it. Pre-cut black acetate is provided for the licence plates, your option to build it with headlamps UP/DOWN and of course 4 headlamps for the rally version.
The kit is far from being perfect. But then again we should remember how old the tooling is and that model building is not a shake and bake hobby. For its price considering it is Italeri, not a bad deal. This kit is 30+ years old, my suggestion, get it with realistic expectations. I would build it again in blue.
My sincere thanks to Italeri USA and Hobbico for the review sample.
