It’s fair to say that One For The Road, the final episode of The Grand Tour in its current guise, gave us a newfound appreciation for the trio of star cars. We already know there’s been a massive surge in interest in the Triumph Stag and Ford Capri GXL, but our hearts were most captured by Jeremy Clarkson’s Lancia Montecarlo.
A stalwart of the long-dormant genre of affordable mid-engined sports cars, the Pininfarina-styled Montecarlo combined a baby supercar vibe with a fizzy little Fiat twin-cam engine and some beautifully balanced handling. Obviously, because it was a Lancia, it had some fairly unusual foibles too, but we’ll get to those.
Lancia Montecarlo – wheel detail
While browsing the classifieds instead of doing proper work, we stumbled across this 1977 Montecarlo for sale with Car and Classic. Unlike the one Clarkson drove across Zimbabwe, it’s a Series 1, meaning it was officially called the Beta Montecarlo, tying it to Lancia’s family of front-wheel drive family cars, coupes and roadsters of the era. The Beta name was dropped for the car’s second series.
This is where the quirks come in. The Series 1 Montecarlo was notorious for its massively overpowered brake servo, which could make the front end lock up if anyone in a five-mile radius of the car even thought about the act of braking. This was one of the main reasons Lancia took the Montecarlo out of production for two whole years between 1978 and 1980, with the revised Series 2 car debuting with… no servo at all.
Lancia Montecarlo – interior
Still, the choice between having to brake a bit harder or ploughing straight on at a corner is probably an easy one which is why this car, like many other Series 1s, has had its servo bypassed – and that’s just the start of the TLC it’s received.
Around 2017, it was given a full respray to its current Rosso Monza colour, further aiding its junior Ferrari vibe, and a year later, its ultra-stylish little 13-inch ‘bowtie’ alloys were fully refurbished. More recently, it’s had a new timing belt and water pump, and been fitted with a rorty stainless steel ‘road and track’ exhaust designed by Lancia tuning specialist Guy Croft.
Lancia Montecarlo – rear
Most importantly, we’re promised that, on the surface at least, there’s no evidence of the biggest foe of any ’70s Italian car: rot. Now that it’s over 40 years old, it’s exempt from MOT testing, so it’s not had one since a pass with a couple of small advisories in 2019, but everything points to a car that’s been lovingly cared for by all its previous owners, and having covered around 57,000 miles, it’s only been used sparingly.
Sadly, there aren’t really any proper bargain classics left these days, and no old Lancia is going to be totally headache-free to own. In the grand scheme of things, though, the £18,500 being asked for this Monte seems like a very tempting price for anyone with a bit of cash lying around for a charismatic, usable classic. Of course, we can’t speak for the cost of having it freighted to Zimbabwe.
