We will be showing the acclaimed documentary “Vincenzo Lancia and the Birth of Modern Motoring”.

We also plan to have a display of Italian cars in the car park. More details and how to book your entry to follow.

This meeting will be a ticketed event with free admission for BMRC members and £10 for guests.

Lancia typified the spirit of the age. At the turn of the 20th century, the motor car fired the imagination like few other inventions.

He was 18, son of an entrepreneur, and living in Turin, a buzzing city reinventing itself as a capital of industry.

In the right place at the right time, he seized his opportunity, first as a test driver for the nascent Fiat and then as their daredevil racing driver, helming mighty machines to the delight of crowds on both sides of the Atlantic.

was a young man with grand designs and in 1906, the famous racer established his own motor company. Not to build racing cars, but to make cars of a certain quality and drivability uncommon at the time.

With his small team of talented engineers, against a backdrop of world war and political upheaval, Lancia embraced unorthodox thinking, listened to his customers and contemplated the ‘total’ car.

Within just 16 years, his quiet revolution was complete, with the creation of the Lancia Lambda, a vehicle so innovative and advanced, it set the agenda for the modern motor car.

A feat he achieved again 15 years later, with the Aprilia, a year before his premature death.

Today Lancia is celebrated worldwide as one of the great Italian marques and for its legendary rally conquests over the last 25 years of the previous millennium.

However, few remember its founding father and how he paved the road to the future.