The Lancia Fulvia Concept Was The Best Car The Company Never Made

Cast your mind back to 2003. Assuming you’d been born in 2003, anyway. Retro car design harking back to the ’50s and ’60s was all the rage. Some of it was good, like the original BMW Mini, and some of it, like the final generation Ford Thunderbird… wasn’t.

Over in Italy, meanwhile, Lancia was continuing its slide into mediocrity that had begun when it had pulled out of the WRC and the Delta Integrale had gone out of production. Surely, though, a company with such a rich heritage of beautiful sporting cars could capitalise on this new atmosphere of nostalgia in the car world?

Clearly it thought so, because at the 2003 Frankfurt Motor Show, it unveiled the Fulvia concept. This was a modern reworking of the brand’s gorgeous ’60s V4-powered coupe, the car that had first put it on the map as a force to be reckoned with on the rally stages.

The concept didn’t have any rallying pretensions, though – it was simply an incredibly pretty little coupe. The basics didn’t sound particularly enticing – the platform came from a Fiat Punto, and the engine, a 1.7-litre nat-asp four-pot with 140bhp, was an off-the-shelf Fiat job too. In fact, the whole thing was pretty much a reskinned Fiat Barchetta roadster.

No, what really made the Fulvia coupe appeal, besides those looks, was its construction. The chassis was pretty conventional, but the body was all aluminium, which meant the concept weighed a mere 990kg.

Those power and weight figures were right up there with a contemporary 1.8-litre Mazda MX-5, but where the Mazda had a cramped and disappointingly plasticky interior, the little Lancia looked fairly roomy and had a cabin filled with sumptuous leather and aluminium (or aluminium-look plastic, anyway), and a boot full of stunning handmade Italian leather luggage.

Granted, the Punto bones meant the Fulvia was front-wheel drive, but then so was the original from the ’60s, and being nose-led never did that much harm.

The best bit? The Fulvia Concept was a working car, and absolutely none of the usual flight-of-fantasy concept car tropes were present. Then-Lancia boss Luca de Meo – who’s now overseeing Renault’s new retro-infused lease of life – reckoned that if between 2000 and 2500 buyers could be found for an admittedly high price point of €35,000, production could happen.

So, gorgeous and production-ready looks, already proven components, a product plan and, on top of all that, an enthusiastic reception to the concept. What could get in the way of the Fulvia becoming reality?

Well, the Fiat group’s perennial problems with money, is the frank answer. There just wasn’t enough cash floating around the company for such a niche product at the time. Although murmurs of production would arise every now and then throughout the rest of the decade, the Fulvia coupe ultimately came to nought.

That’s a real shame, because it could have made a fine addition to the fleet of noughties sports cars that are now listed used at ever-more tempting prices. Either that, or it could have become an instant future classic. We’ll never know, and Lancia’s underwhelming 21st century has continued – although the new Ypsilon HF electric hot hatch at least offers a glimmer of hope that that could change.