Lancia Astura Cabriolet Pininfarina

When the Astura debuted in 1931, Lancia was already well-established as one of the most respected automobile manufacturers in the world. The brilliant engineer Vincenzo Lancia gave life to such vehicles as the Kappa, Lambda, and Dilambda – all revered for their advanced engineering, superb build quality, and revolutionary design features. Because Lancia was a small company, new models often overlapped with outgoing ones, as was the case with the Astura, which sold alongside the Dilambda for the first few years. Like the Dilambda, the Astura featured a separate chassis rather than the stressed unitary body of the Lambda. While arguably a step back technologically, this allowed Italy’s finest coachbuilders to work their magic on the otherwise brilliant platform. The design was shared with the four-cylinder Artena, though the Astura served the flagship role thanks to the superb, ingenious narrow-angle V8 engine. The Astura formed the basis of some of the most spectacular of all pre-war Lancias, favored by Italy’s cultural and political elite throughout the 30s.