Lancia 037

Good intentions and all that ... I was going to tackle the DBR1, but looking at the Le Mans stash, I was intrigued by the Audi R10 TDi. I started on it, and will report separately, but the arrival in the mail of the detail kit for Hasegawa's Lancia 037 got me distracted.

This was a short-lived Group B car, successor to the Stratos; it seems it was also the last 2WD Group B car to have any success. Abarth was brought on board to add a supercharger to the basic Fiat twin-cam four, a mid-engine chassis was whipped up, and Walter Röhrl won the Monte Carlo in it in 1983. (He subsequently moved to Audi and did very well with the S1 quattro).



The kit is very nice with crisp part lines and clean dowels. The spark plugs and distributor are perfectly set up, with little dimples in them, for drilling out with a #75 drill bit, so I wired it up. I had to scratch build the coil, but other than that it all looks fine.



The supercharger is hidden below what I assume is an air-to-water intercooler, and there is no indication of how it is driven, or how fuel is metered (injection, presumably). The drive is presumably by belt off the front of the crank along with auxiliary bits like the alternator and water pump, but all this would be up against the bulkhead and well hidden once assembled, so no major issues, as you can see in the next picture.



One flaw in the kit is the fact that the front compartment lid is molded separately and can therefore be left open, but the rear engine lid is not. While there is a large window through which one can peer to view the Abarth motor, the cut looks relatively straightforward and I may get brave and open it up.



There is a theme developing here: mid- or rear-engined coupes, four or six cylinders, some with forced induction, ranging from the 1.3 litre Alpine A210 and Abarth Periscopio to the 2.4 litre Lancia Stratos, by way of the Peugeot 205 Turbo. Stay tuned. And yes, Alice, I will get back to the DBR1.