Lancia Motor Club

General => General Chat => Topic started by: chriswgawne on 29 July, 2016, 09:04:34 AM



Title: Lancia owners profile
Post by: chriswgawne on 29 July, 2016, 09:04:34 AM
Earlier I put this post in the wrong place by mistake*
When I was in my friendly local tyre fitters earlier this week in Vo having 5 new tyres on our Fulvia GTE, there were quite a few customers who wandered over to look at the car and chat.
One, a well dressed Italian man of a similar age to me - 65 years old - walked over, greeted me, inspected the car which was up in the air at waist height then simply said in Italian:
FIAT was for the workers, Alfa Romeo was for the sporty drivers (pregnant pause for effect) ...........but Lancia was for the well off drivers.
I laughed it off then thought about it on the way home and then when I told Jacky we decided that probably until the late 1960s this was actually true, certainly in Italy.
I had never really seen it quite this way before in 45 years of Lancia ownership.
Chris

*Removed it for you ;)


Title: Re: Lancia owners profile
Post by: sparehead3 on 29 July, 2016, 11:43:16 AM
At a carnival a few years ago I was waiting in a queue for a parade and a very elderly lady asked what the car was and on saying 'Lancia' she replied 'A Lancia! Oh, we should be so lucky!' - which is echos of a similar mindset.


Title: Re: Lancia owners profile
Post by: stanley sweet on 29 July, 2016, 01:52:13 PM
When you think that up until the late 60's (possibly a bit later?) Alperton would pack an engineer off to service your car wherever you lived in Britain. Also reminds me of one of my favourite stories of when Rolls Royce bought a Flavia and dismantled it. In their report they stated that they didn't know how Lancia could sell them at the price (we all know the answer to that) and that 'Lancia is the only other serious car manufacturer in the world'. So they considered it better than, for instance. a Mercedes. The quote by the Italian gent also reminded me of something else I heard once - that you are either 'Turin or Milan (football), Ferrari or Maserati, Alfa or Lancia'. It was meant in a way that you either liked a bit of flashiness, or quiet style. I may be wrong on the teams, I heard it a long time ago.


Title: Re: Lancia owners profile
Post by: neil-yaj396 on 30 July, 2016, 07:46:03 AM
When you think that up until the late 60's (possibly a bit later?) Alperton would pack an engineer off to service your car wherever you lived in Britain. Also reminds me of one of my favourite stories of when Rolls Royce bought a Flavia and dismantled it. In their report they stated that they didn't know how Lancia could sell them at the price (we all know the answer to that) and that 'Lancia is the only other serious car manufacturer in the world'. So they considered it better than, for instance. a Mercedes. The quote by the Italian gent also reminded me of something else I heard once - that you are either 'Turin or Milan (football), Ferrari or Maserati, Alfa or Lancia'. It was meant in a way that you either liked a bit of flashiness, or quiet style. I may be wrong on the teams, I heard it a long time ago.

It's wrong on the cars too now. So many members have modern Alphas.


Title: Re: Lancia owners profile
Post by: peteracs on 30 July, 2016, 08:18:32 PM

It's wrong on the cars too now. So many members have modern Alphas.

Neil, was that a deliberate typo.....?

Peter


Title: Re: Lancia owners profile
Post by: neil-yaj396 on 31 July, 2016, 06:54:11 AM
No, unless it was a subconscious inability to type the A word! Almost as bad as my 'quattro' gaff.