Why This Car Was Doomed From the Very Beginning... The Lancia Montecarlo

Hello everybody welcome I'm Jack and today we're going to talk about this lancha Monte Carlo or for the Brits Lancia Monte Carlo this is a really interesting car because it is the first car that was not just designed it was designed developed and built by pinning Farina it was beautiful it was exotic it was mid-engined and yet it was a flop there's three reasons for that the first has to do with association with another launcher model the second is a problem with the brakes and the third is to do with legislation I'm going to tell you about all those but first let's take a quick look around this car it was designed by Paula Martin at pining Farina and I'm sure you'll agree it's a really really striking Design This is a series two car I'm going to tell you some of the differences with the series one as well the first of which is that Grill this has the later Grill which was introduced with the Lanta Delta also the series one's cars had really striking bow tie Wheels the other big cosmetic difference is the buttress on the series ones it's just solid metal on these it's glass and I have to say I do prefer the glass cover that you have here it just I think it works better with the overall design just hands it a little bit more delicacy because the back is already quite Stumpy so if you have that solid bit it highlights how short it is I think this works better the engine bay is also really really interesting for a start the engine lid opens up sideways so what we have there is the quintessentially amazing Lamprey twin cam 120 horsepower it puts out in this version and again in the series 2 it's supposed to have slightly higher compression heads and therefore more torque although I've heard conflicting opinions on that on the internet the other really interesting thing is you'll notice is that it's really offset to the side but between that because it's transverse between where it is and the gearbox on the side I guess that the weight distribution works out but I haven't seen that in many cars now there was a big element of practicality because this front boot is pretty much cavernous by the standards of most mid-engine cars as well the interior isn't the roomiest it does suffer from Italy's 70s early 80s quality some of the stuff feels pretty Fragile on here this is the quintessential squared off with the Fiat style dials so it's quite typical for the Euro the controls there for the aircon look particularly fragile luckily I don't need to touch them today and the owner in any case has removed the aircon from this car which I highly agree with because they were never very good in the first place don't particularly need it it's got what I believe is the original stereo in there with Phil Collins as well which is very apt it's quite a cool little car driving position is pretty good actually I mean you have the wheel where you want it you have the gear stick in the right place the pedal box isn't too cramped mind you when I actually put my feet on the pedals my legs are scrunched up so it's a bit Italian driving position but it doesn't bother me as much as it might bother some anyway let's take it out I'll tell you a bit more about those three things that made it fail and how it feels on the road today come on so how did the Monte Carlo actually come to life well it all started with the Fiat 124 Fiat were Keen to find a replacement for that car and Pini Farina started working on this with that in mind it was going to be a mid-engine to V6 replacement however then Turner beat them to it with the x19 that didn't discourage Benin ferrinado and They carried on development the V6 mid-engine car which they'd been working on then became an a bath race car which was only raced for one I think the Giroud Italia which is the Tour of Italy and it came second in that so it's pretty successful but for some reason Fiat didn't want to continue to use it in competition lancha at the time were desperate for a halo car and it was handed to Lan change 74 by that stage there had been the oil crisis already 73 so the engine was downgraded from a V6 to a four liter and they used the twin cam for your classic twin camera and play the engine for that so it was launched in 1975 to quite some excitement it was a mid-engine the Lancer it was going to be great to spearhead its new Range curiously they didn't immediately just call it the Monte Carlo they first called it Monte Carlo so it was part of the beta Ranger cars as we'll see that was going to have quite far-reaching consequences but also it didn't really make that much sense if you think about it because this shared almost nothing with the bitter saloons Coupes and so on the reason why I think they did it is that this was a very particular car in the pinning farina actually this is if you really go down to it this is opinion Farina it's not a Fiat it's not a launcher because benifarina styled it developed it and they even built it so I guess in a way it was I don't know it was a way of trying to tie it in more with Lan chatter to say it was part of the beta family it did also of course go on to spawn a particularly amazing car that is the o37 north 37 rally car it was the last one that managed to win the World Rally Championship as a two-wheel drive so it has quite some Heritage to it in Truth the Monte Carlo doesn't really have a huge amount in common with the north 37 it's literally the passenger cell that part of the chassis was taken over everything else really on the o37 was changed even the layout of the engine which was no longer transverse but longitudinal so the poor Monte Carlo looked like it had everything going for it in actual fact quite a few problems were looming the first one was that it was given the better name as a or beta as you'd say in English and the beta in the UK in particular but all over it suffered from incredible rust problems to the front subframe it completely mashed lancha's reputation and ended up making lancha leave the UK altogether so the association with the beta didn't do the Monte Carlo any good another issue with it was that the brakes in the series one there was a definite flaw now this is a mid-engined car and they had Servo brakes but only at the front so what would happen particularly in the web is that you'd come barreling up to a corner break hard the fronts would lock up and you'd just go straight that was addressed in the series too there was a gap in production of about 16 months between the one and the two and for the series two they took away the brakes over altogether put some bigger discs at the front there's different Wheels as you can see that was also to hit bigger wheels for bigger to clear the bigger brakes at the front and that problem was pretty much sorted out there were some longer term issues though it looked like it should be a blisteringly fast car but even in European spec with 120 horsepower North to 60 was around nine seconds top speed 120 miles an hour so I it wasn't really a particularly quick car so those all those issues hurt sales in Europe they weren't terrible but they weren't quite good enough especially the series too once the damage had been done by the beta that really affected it but the key to this car's success was the US it had to do well in the US but out of a total production run of about 7 800 only 1 600 were sold in the US and that's a simple reason for that U.S cars were just absolutely awful the European cars weren't Balls of Fire the US cars had to make do because of emissions regulations with a 1.8 liter low compression engine putting out just 83 horsepower 40 Less on top of which it had some horrible safety bumpers different lights which made it ugly and heavier so it was it was absolutely it wasn't a sports car it didn't look good and in the US I think they sold 1600 and that's what really killed off the Monte Carlo now today they do have a following and quite rightly now I've been driving this now for a few minutes and already I can tell it's one of those cars that they flawed I really I really do have a liking for first of all it rides ever so well it really does have a nice a nice ride but it doesn't I'm not going Mega quick it is wet but it doesn't lean very much [Applause] the thing is though what's it like today as a classic let's do a little pull through the gears it's got a single weapon there were complaints that this was that the engine sounded too rough that the mechanical noise was too much but to me it's it's pretty good actually I don't think I think it's a pretty smooth and as I said it wakes up around three and a half gear change can be bad on these this one's been sorted and it it's it's absolutely fine it's really nice it turns in very very sweetly as well it feels incredibly well balanced it's not front it's not back so it's got that lovely mid-engine feel it rides absolutely beautifully it really does and it it keeps it stable on the road the suspension works really really well you know what this Monte Carlo is another one of those cars that has just surprised me really really I'm not sure now I'm driving it I'd say at about six tenths today slimy Road and chappie Williams it has just literally finished restoring it and I'm taking extra extra care with it but it's a very pleasant car to drive maybe the engine does feel a tad underpowered and you do have to bring it to get it to to wake up a little bit that's okay the brakes don't feel particularly strong that might be because they just removed the servo there's a little bit of travel at the lever I mean obviously this is an old restored car so even though it's a very good one I don't know if that's what they would have felt like originally they probably did um could do with a little bit more power in my view and again Engine little bit gutless under three thousand but I don't understand what all the complaints were about how noisy it was this is the spider even there isn't that much wind noise the engine to me isn't that intrusive you don't get a lot of exhaust noise which is a little bit of a shame because the Fiat twin cam I think can sound amazing but all the same it's a real shame because I think this is a car that should have succeeded in terms of chassis there's loads and loads of Promise in there it's got the same sort of strut suspension my personal struggle around that the x19 had it drives incredibly well it's a shame that those things um those sort of three separate things happen the US in particular which made it quite difficult for this to be a success in terms of sales it was certainly a flopped for lancho deserved to do better thank you all so much for watching if you feel so inclined please do subscribe because that really helps the channel if you have a car like an interesting car an Italian car 70s 80s that kind of stuff that you want me to review then please do get in touch I am particularly looking at the moment for a time at 8 32 entertainers really any other sort of like early lunches anything like that thank you so much and I really look forward to seeing you for the next video

Channel: Number 27

Views: 217,483

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Id: nGKXgZbKWY4

Length: 13min 14sec (794 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 02 2023