CORRECTION: This car was first registered in 1975, not 1974.
The history file for this car is very good, subject to two large chronological gaps. It includes the original order form, the original sale invoice, many MOTs, many bills, and various letters.
Factoid: three of the car's eight non-dealer owners have been called Alan!
The car was manufactured in September 1973. It is one of the last twenty five built and may be the last RHD version.
The car was sold in February 1975 to a partner in Price Waterhouse Coper who lived in Belgravia and had a house near Inverness. This was his second Lancia Coupe. The car was Rosso Scuro (mis typed Rosso Escuro on the order form) with grey cloth. Options specified were inertia reel seat belts, a Radiomobile and speakers, and an electric aerial. The price new was £3255. The supplying dealer was Lancia, Audi, Mercedes, and BMW dealer Waterloo Carriage (London) Limited, which was in business from 1964 to 1996.
The first owner exchanged letters with Lancia in May 1975 complaining that parts were not available - he wanted a torsion bar, a plug for an electric window, and a CR reverse switch. The parts were in short supply but a note on the letter shows that they arrived in June 1975.
The car was sold in June 1982 to a chap with a Bloomsbury address for £1500, via a London dealer called Lanciana. The PWC chap replaced the car with a Gamma Coupe LHV 80X.
The second owner traded the HF for a new Montecarlo EJV 669Y, with Lancia dealer David Short (Motors) in Cleethorpes in May 1982. The dealer gave £800 as the PX price, and sold the car to its third owner (price unknown).
The same dealer sold the car again in September 1986 for £550. The fourth owner, who lived in Grimsby and posts on the Beta Forum as rossocorsa, corresponded with the first owner about the car, and with Pininfarina in Italy about build numbers. He gave the car a very thorough restoration in the late 1980s. This was covered in the LMC journal.
During the restoration the car was repainted and was trimmed in beige cloth. It appears that a donor car, HEY 920N, was bought for £350 from a bloke in Warrington as part of the project.
The restored car was sold to its fifth owner, a Dublin Lancia enthusiast, in 2005, it seems for only £850 "as seen for restoration", and went to Ireland as ZV 7848. The car might have had another full or partial restoration after 2005. The car appeared in Classic and Sports Car in June 2012.
The car came back to the UK in August 2015, bought by a dealer in Hereford, who counts as the sixth owner because he had the car for a while and had some work done on it including some welding. The dealer had the car re-registered as HJD 208N, and sold it in January 2016 for £12,500 to an LMC member in Bristol.
The seventh owner had various work done on the car including a front suspension rebuild, some work on the ignition and fuel system, a wheel refurb and a new set of Firestones which the car still has on.
The car was sold again to its eighth owner, another LMC member, in 2017, had a few more bits and bobs done, and was sold again to me, the ninth owner, last Friday.
The file shows that the car has in general been well maintained by its owners and has had lots of new parts over the years. It seems from the tyre bills always to have had decent tyres on it.
My plan is to attend to the rusty arch and other smaller rust spots, give the car a gentle machine polish, perhaps paint the control stalks which are a tad mottled, and sort out the (I hope) minor mechanical issues. I will then use the car as much as I can.
