1955 Lancia Florida (Pininfarina)

Without a doubt the most famous and influential special on an Aurelia chassis was the Florida berlina by Pininfarina. It appeared in 1955 and four of them have been made, one 2-door and three 4-door sedans.

The Florida berlina had a radical squarish design with a full width grill and decent tail fins. The spacious cabin featured large glass areas and a wrap-around panoramic windshield. Like the standard Aurelia the 4-door Florida special had pillarless, opposed opening doors. All bodies were painted in a tasteful 2-tone color scheme.

The modern pontoon-like looks of the Florida impressed and intrigued customers and car manufacturers alike. When Lancia came under new management in 1956 it was decided that the successor of the Aurelia should be based on the style and shape of the Florida show cars; this became the Lancia Flaminia berlina which was introduced in 1957. But it didn’t stop there because other manufacturers contacted Pininfarina for similar sedan designs. This way models like the "Farina" saloons of BMC (Morris Oxford V, Austin A 55 Cambridge Mk II, Riley 4/68, Wolseley 15/60 and MG Magnette Mk III) of 1959, the Fiat 1800/2100/2300 berlinas of 1959 (a Mario Boano design under Pininfarina supervision) and the Peugeot 404 of 1960 came on the market. The new style of the Florida influenced European car design for decades to come and established Pininfarina as one of the most important styling studios.

In the 1950s, Italy’s design maestro, Pinin Farina, changed the shape of automotive architecture while drumming up new business for his expanding carrozzeria. Here’s the story of the dramatic show car -- the 1955 Lancia Florida -- that touched off a worldwide styling revolution with an influence you can still see today.

The Lancia Florida is now some 50 years distant, so its colossal significance may not be fully appreciated by today’s style-conscious observer. Yet few design studies offer such a clear-cut example of a truly new form.

There was nothing like the Florida in Pinin Farina’s earlier work, and the maestro certainly didn’t copy it from any of his rivals in Turin, London, Milan, or Detroit.

When he sprang his surprise on the world at the Turin Salone dell’Automobile in the spring of 1955, everyone was unprepared. And no one could grasp at that moment how much the Florida would influence the art of car design in years to come.

If that sounds like an exaggeration, it’s not. With the Florida, Farina bid farewell to "monolithic" shapes and said hello to a new principle: body development by symmetrical juxtaposition of curved panels.

Look at it this way: If older cars were sculpted, as if hewn from a lump of clay, the Florida was just the opposite. It was built like a house of cards, each card preformed to a certain aesthetic concept. The starting point was not a solid object but merely a surface.

The Florida was remarkably clean for its time. The major theme was form, with a near-total absence of decoration. Horizontal emphasis was provided by the beltline, which picked up from the front fenders and stretched into the high rear fenders, blending with the backwards sweep of the C-post.

Further strengthening the horizontal motif was a full-length sheet-metal crease just above the wheel cutouts. A hardtop coupe built in steel, the Lancia Florida also featured a wraparound windshield and "dogleg" A-posts, prompted no doubt by the contemporary U.S. styling fad originated by General Motors.

The grille was not new, being merely a variation on the flattened oval that Farina was using on so many Ferraris. Headlamps were housed within the grille frame, with smaller auxiliary lamps recessed into the front fender tips.

In proportions, the Lancia Florida was perfect for its time. The profile was long and sleek, and rear deck length was sufficient for full visual balance with the hood, thereby giving extra emphasis to the car’s static 50/50 unladen weight distribution.

The shallow greenhouse and big wheels may look dated to modern eyes. However, those wheels -- shod with Michelin X 165-400 tires -- seemed smaller than expected for a 104.3-inch-wheelbase car in 1955, and the absence of fixed B-posts counteracted the low roof, giving a definite airiness to the interior. The prototype was originally finished in two-tone paint, with white on the roof and decklid and dark blue everywhere else.

It didn’t take long for Pinin Farina to develop a four-door version of the 1955 Lancia Florida design. It was ready in September 1955, still on the same short-wheelbase platform.

The windshield base was moved forward and the hood correspondingly shortened to make room for the rear doors. Headlamps were relocated from the grille to the fenders, with the parking lights directly below. A Ferrari-like air scoop appeared on the hood, and the A-posts were straightened to vertical, still with a wrapped windshield.

Like the coupe, the four-door Florida was pillarless. Doors were center-opening, and Farina came up with a novel arrangement to make up for the lack of B-posts. When closed, the back doors locked into the fronts, and all doors also latched on the sills.

Frameless sideglass precluded any roof-mounted door attachment points. Lancia had some misgivings about this arrangement, so the Flaminia emerged as a pillared sedan with full window frames and conventional front-hinged rear doors.

The Flaminia was built on a 113-inch wheelbase. Power was supplied by the largest 2.5-liter (152-cubic-inch) version of the Aurelia V-6, detuned to 102 horsepower. Naturally it inherited the Aurelia’s front-drive transaxle, thus keeping tooling costs within strict limits.

The de Dion rear suspension was retained, but Fessia departed wildly from Lancia practice by going to a new front suspension design with upper and lower A-arms and coil springs inclined at about 20 degrees from vertical.

Several major manufacturers had noticed the fundamental styling change represented by the original Lancia Florida and began talking to Pinin Farina about doing something similar. What he did was sell a scaled-down version of the basic Flaminia design intended to accept engines of 1.5-2.0 liters (91-121 cid).

It appeared in quick succession at British Motor Corporation in 1958 (Wolseley 15/60, Austin A-55 Cambridge, MG Magnette Mark III, Morris Oxford Series IV, and Riley 4/68), at Fiat in 1959 (1800 and 2100), and at Peugeot in 1960 (for the 404). The French and Italian cars stayed with big horizontal grilles. Austin and Morris used less daring ones, while the Riley and Wolseley had narrower, more traditional, vertical-bar treatments.

Pronounced rear fender "fins" appeared on the British cars, which also had horizontal chrome moldings running back from headlamp center level and curved downward in the rear door area. More modest blades graced the Peugeot, while the Fiats’ flanks were straight.

The Florida was already influential, but Pinin Farina had still further plans for this design.

Показ шоу-кара Florida на основе Lancia Aurelia в 1955-м стал для компании Фарины знаковым. Его серийная 4-дверная версия в 1958 году триумфально вышла в свет под именем Lancia Flaminia -- что интересно, сам Фарина использовал ее как автомобиль на каждый день. Что особо интересно -- Flaminia решила судьбу нескольких принадлежавших автомобильным компаниям дизайн-бюро. Проанализировав эту машину, кое-кто из боссов пришел к выводу о творческой несостоятельности собственных дизайн-служб и дал команду прикрыть их и начать работать с Фариной. Пожалуй, наиболее верным клиентом Фарины в те годы стала British Motor Corporation -- сотрудничество началось в 1958 году с весьма лаконичного Austin A40 и продолжилось другими моделями, например, такими как 1100.