The remining car came back again in 1977’s Giro d’Italia, now sponsored by the airline Alitalia and badged #539. Hrabalek still brings Wheeljack out for the occasional vintage track day. The turbo’s troubles were not over yet, however, and the former #599 car, (now numbered 25) caught fire and burned to the ground in practice for a race in Zeltweg, Austria. One of the turbos meets is grisly fate in Austria. The Turbos line up at practice for the 1976 Giro d’Italia. #598 won the race with Sandro Munari (a successful rally Stratos driver) and Carlo Facetti at the helm. Lancia revised the design, dramatically extending the tail and bringing more air into the engine bay, and built a second car following the new design, bringing them to the ‘76 Giro d’Italia Automobilistica as #598 and #599, in Marlboro Cigarrette livery. The car retired from its next race due to transmission troubles. The #21 car caught fire during practice for its first race in 1976, and did not start. The first pair of Stratos Turbos had considerable problems with overheating, since the engine is in the back, and the turbocharger generates extra heat beyond what the engine already gave off. The turbos started out with smaller tail sections – this turned out to be a pain in the ass. Some tuning to the 24 valve Dino and a KKK turbocharger brought the Stratos up to a pavement-ripping 552 bhp (412 kW), and design firm Bertone provided new sheet metal to the car, giving it the wide stance, huge downforce spoilers, and the wide door sills like running boards… filled with fuel! After the Stratos’ rally success, Lancia wanted to try their hand at the newly-created Group 5 silhouette road racing circuit, which would no doubt be dominated by the Renault Alpines and Porsche 911s (homologated as the Porsche 935-Jazz) of the day. Clearly, he’s not the all-road supercar described above, right? Not quite. How low can you go? The Stratos Turbo was barely higher than your belt buckle.īut Wheeljack’s bodywork is barely higher off the ground than well-cut grass. These cars are described by their owners and drivers as barely-contained balls of automotive rage, with one Petrolicious interviewee saying the car was a “symphony of vaguely disastrous noises” The Stratos Turbo has the wild proportions of a supercar (such as MP Sideswipe), but form followed function, leaving them less “sexy”. A few hundred “road cars” were produced to homologate the car. The tiny car dominated rally racing for 3 years straight, mopping up nearly every race. The car was basically shrink-wrapped around the 315 bhp (235 kW) engine, using a jacked-up off-road racing suspension. The Lancia Stratos was designed after Ferrari agreed to furnish enough of the rugged and powerful Dino (pronounced DEE-no) engine for Lancia’s Group 4 off-road rally racing program. Masterpiece Wheeljack brings this wild vehicle into finer focus. The long tail of the car housed the turbocharger, and allowed air to flow through the engine bay for cooling. His alternate mode, the Group 5 Lancia Stratos Turbo, stood out like a sore thumb among the Autobot Cars: it was not quite an exotic like Sideswipe, though it was wide and flat, but it didn’t look like a racer either: certainly Mirage belonged in F1, and certainly Jazz belonged in road racing, but what was this weapon-looking, spoiler-tastic, flare-fendered monstrosity? Takara’s Masterpiece Wheeljack faithfully re-creates the details of the original car, except for numerous omitted racing decals. Movie - Revenge of the Fallen (ROTF) (136).
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