[Closed] Best Model 1972 Lancia Fulvia 1972 Monte Carlo winner.

Best Model 1972 Lancia Fulvia 1972 Monte Carlo winner.

Lancia dominated the 1972 International Championship for Manufacturers (predecessor to the FIA World Rally Championship). The tool for this was the Lancia Fulvia 1.6 HF driven by the team of Sandro Munari and Mario Mannucci. They hanily won the 1972 Monte Carlo Rally by more than 10 minutes over the 2nd place Porsche 911S.

Fast forward 9 years to 1981, when yours truly visited Europe for the first time. In Turin (Italy's Detroit) I visited what is now the national auto museum. After seeing all the goodies there, I thought I had time to take in the Lancia collection, which I had read about in Automobile Quarterly. Reaching the gate of the Lancia plant after 4:00, the guards finally found someone who spoke English and he told me to come back the next morning.

Which I did. At the gate the same guy (I think) escorted me into the plant. By now I'm thinking "hey, I don't believe the collection is open to the public". I went up to the second floor (after viewing Lancias on the assembly line), past a richly wood-panelled meeting room, and into a tile-floored mini-museum with maybe two dozen cars in it, mostly on jackstands. Just me and my guide in there.

The '72 Fulvia was on display, and, being the heyday of white metal and resin kits, I wanted to get pics from all angles. I asked and was given permission to open the driver's door and get an interior shot, though it didn't come out very well. But I opened the same door handle that Sandro Munari did!

On to models. I sold that kit long ago (might have been a Merikit), I missed the Ixo diecast, and current partworks seem a bit cheap-looking. This year Best came out with a slush/snow encrusted version of the little Fulvia, which I grabbed. The model is mostly accurate based on photos I can find.

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These two pics show that the displayed car lacks the foglamps used in 1972. Online pics show a variety of wheels, so I can't say how accurate the model is there, but I did find a shot of the car with gold front/silver rear wheels like the model. I'm guessing the gold wheels were shod with snow tires (the Fulvia is front wheel drive).

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Well, the interior is black, so they got that right.

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The museum car has the rally tag on the trunk lid, whereas the actual car and the model position it on the lower right of the rear window. I'm guessing that the original car was used in subsequent rallys in 1972, and to restore the car to Monte specs for the collection they made this error. One inaccuracy on the model is the lack of trunk tie-down latches like the original. But despite this minor omission, how can I not like this model?