For my Fulvia Sport Zagato I think you’d use the term ‘garage find’ rather than ‘barn find’. As a 1971 Series 2 my new acquisition is the oldest of her model in the country.
Much too clean and pretty to ever have resided in something as rustic as a barn.
Before we got together the car had had one owner from new. The purchase was made at Weybridge Lancia in Surrey and the car lived all its life in the village — right next to Brooklands, in fact.
She comes with the 1.3s engine with five-speed gearbox — as opposed to the four speed box is the series 1 cars. When first introduced in 1965 these cars were all-alloy — but only a couple of hundred of these were ever built.
Image: Chris Nelson
Production soon progressed onto steel bodies with alloy doors, all with distinctive side-opening bonnets, followed in ’71 by the Series 2 cars, as in this example, with steel doors and front hinged bonnets.
The irony is the steel cars don’t weigh that much more than the all-alloy versions, but are much more structurally sound.
In the all alloy, lightened Competizione guise these cars were regulars at the Targa Florio until the late sixties, were highly competitive in their class at the 12 hours of Sebring, while winning the Daytona 24 hour race in 1969, beating the more powerful Porsche team 911s.
Image: Chris Nelson
But whatever the car’s ample heritage, it is the distinctive styling by the house of Zagato that makes this car so appealing, for me, at least.
Zagato’s distinctive signature styling has always polarised opinion.
But believe me, this is one of those cars to which the lens is rarely flattering. In the sculpted steel its beauty really shines.
