Lancia Fulvia Coupe Rallye S

Ownership of Lancia transferred to Carlo Pesenti in 1959, following which the brand’s Technical Director Antonio Fessia successfully ushered in a new era of mass-produced front-wheel drive cars beginning with the Flavia in the early 1960s. A professor at the Polytechnic University of Turin, Fessia was a staunch advocate of this technical solution, which was innovative at the time but would later become the most widely adopted configuration by all car manufacturers to this day.

It was customary for Lancia to launch cars with a larger or smaller sister model, as in the case of the Aprilia/Ardea and Aurelia/Appia. So in 1963 the Flavia was followed by its "little sister" the Fulvia, which combined innovation and tradition in its technical solutions. The Fulvia also adopted the new front-wheel drive setup but with a narrow V 4-cylinder engine in keeping with Lancia convention. Four efficient disc brakes, another rarity for the time, underlined the excellence of the equipment, which borrowed heavily from the Flavia.