Lancia Stratos

I didn’t set out to do a Lancia Stratos concept but as the design progressed, I could see that it could easily become one. I was inspired by the Stratos, but I didn’t try to copy it. I love the wrap around windshield, the extreme wedge, the oversized wheel flares and the beautiful quirkiness of the original. The Stratos is a tiny car with a transverse mounted mid-engine. I reduced the wheelbase as I was working on the sketch to better reflect the diminutive size of the Stratos.

Originally, I was sketching cars with a tubular section. Then I added the rear fender from my Buick shooting brake rendering to the front and rear fenders of this design. I wanted the design theme to have soft forms contrasting with sharp edges and intersecting shapes. I was going for deconstructed quirkiness.

I started this series of sketches with a Porsche rendering I found on Behance.com. I sketched over it in Adobe Photoshop to turn it into a Stratos inspired theme.

I had great results with the style: Vizcom General. I used my featured image from the Buick shooting brake as a reference image in Vizcom. I combined the best versions of the fenders, roof and hood from separate Vizcom generated images. After working on the sketch in Photoshop, I decided that the sketch result was nice but not very new. So I went back to my original Photoshop sketch then cut and pasted portions of it back onto the latest rendering to achieve the featured image.

Note that air is fed to cool the mid-engine from the back of the roof and from the side ahead of the rear quarter.