My father bought his new Beta 1800 Berlina in 1975 to replace his 4.2 litre Jaguar which was rather thirsty to put it mildly. I swear you could watch the fuel gauge sinking even when sat motionless in traffic.
The Lancia had extra wax protection applied from new by the dealer despite having a factory applied protection. Seemed like overkill to me at the time
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After he’d driven the new car home, he and I stood in front of it together and admired it. With its bright yellow paint and futuristic styling, it was quite a dramatic sight. I can remember my father saying that he wondered what his father (who’d died well before WW II when my dad was only 14) would have made of it.
I also recall how, on the first weekend, he washed and lovingly leathered it dry, leaving the doors on the catch to allow any remaining moisture to escape. He then gently drove it into our garage (brick-built with a door on horizontal rollers). As he touched the brakes, a rear door which had
not caught on the catch, swung open and bashed against the plaster rendered side of the garage leaving a dent. My poor father was so devastated that he went to bed to recover – this was in the middle of a Saturday afternoon!
My father said that the Lancia had far better handling and road-holding than his Jaguar – not to mention it using only half the fuel. He never let me drive it – perhaps because he saw how I screwed my mum’s Escort
The next summer, 1976, I set off from the UK with my gf around Europe in my MGC roadster. My family (mum, dad and my 3 siblings) also went onto mainland Europe in the Lancia.
We met up in Switzerland. My MG had never missed a beat. They however reported the nightmare experience they had had at the German-Swiss border when, after the fast run on the German autobahn in the hot July weather, they switched off the engine in the queue at customs…
and the Beta simply refused to restart. The family had to get out and push the bright yellow, gleaming, modern car across the border providing involuntary entertainment for a horde of amused onlookers. Very ignominious! It then took over half an hour before it could be re-started.
They had numerous further similar experiences with recalcitrant starting. Their discomfort was added to by the fact that someone managed to spill some milk down the side of the front seat where it soaked into the carpet under the seat rail. It was not possible to get to it to clean it properly and the car very quickly developed a gruesome stench (which could only finally be fully eliminated once back home in the UK by removing the seat). Not the best mood-enhancer. All in all their European trip was memorable, but mainly for the wrong reasons.
Here it was already emanating a foul malodour and they were happy to be out of the car. Switzerland, 1976:
By the next winter the car was 18 months old and, to our disbelief, rust began to bubble through the front wings. The dealers repaired it foc. My dad kept it, but never seemed to fully adapt to driving with its manual box after having a series of automatics beforehand. He used to cause me physical pain by negotiating roundabouts still in 5th gear. The torque of the engine just about permitted it, but it was not nice!
After about 5 years, despite all the normal dealer maintenance and always being garaged, the car had become so rust-ridden that it was scrap. It was the first (and only car) of ours that was collected by a scrap yard dealer.
My father had had enough of Italian cars and replaced it with a Scirocco II which he drove until his death, in 1986, without ever having any problems.
It was more by chance that I became a Lancia owner myself 19 years ago. This Beta Spider (I’d never ever actually seen one before) suddenly appeared on a local VW-Audi forecourt and it seemed positively criminal that it was standing in the April rain. This one-owner car had been traded in by a local hairdresser when she bought a new Audi cabrio. I discovered it on the Friday evening, phoned the garage on Saturday morning, test-drove and agreed to buy it on the Monday.
I too have now also had the joy of being stuck with a hot car that doesn’t want to start. I now wonder what my father would say if he knew that I had a Beta!
