The Lancia D50 was a revolutionary design, conceived and developed by the legendary Vittorio Jano, responsible for the pre-war Alfa Romeo 1750 and 8C cars. The D50 was rivalled in its period for speed and handling only by the Mercedes Benz W196; the story is well told in Chris Nixon’s book ‘Rivals’.
The D50 featured a host of entirely new features – a four cam, V8, twin plug, dry sump engine which acted as a stressed number and carrier for the front suspension, an angled propeller shaft to place the driver as low as possible and improve aerodynamic efficiency, a five-speed transaxle gear box and, most noticeably of all, twin outboard fuel tanks mounted between the wheels to improve weight distribution and to smooth the air flow. The car had a genuine 240bhp and weighed only 650kgs.
The D50 was a sensation on its first outing at Barcelona in 1954 where Ascari placed it on pole. The 1955 season was plagued by minor teething problems and the car lived in the shadow of the Mercedes Benz W196 despite a string of pole starts by Ascari (Turin, Pau, Naples and Monaco), Castellotti (Spa) and Hawthorn (Oulton Park) and second place by Castellotti at Monaco. Disheartened by the death of Ascari and on the verge of bankruptcy from the no-costs barred racing programme, Lancia handed the cars over to Ferrari who in 1956 won the world championships (Fangio) with the modified Lancia-Ferrari. |
