The thing about the Lancia is its so short that it can't really handle high speeds like the top gear test track. Its meant for much narrower rally stages. Other wise, the thing WILL kill you. I agree though if they would have waited for a dry track, or just let the Stig drive steadier it would have been a much cleaner lap over all.
@@SHDW-nf2ki I can drive a Stratos at high speeds the Stig was overcorrecting the whole time you need to let the car coast not just stomp on the brakes then gas like a regular car
What top gear forgot to mention is that this car was just finished and not tested. They where asked to come back a week later to pick it up. They insisted to take it anyway. The hawk kit is good.
@@213davidhunter friend of mine has a hawk Stratos. It is an awesome car which does not show any of the problems in that show. SOB to drive, like the original but shit loads of fun.
@@robertsaca3512 They didn't lie about the Caparo T1. But that's because despite all the engineering that went into making it basically a street-legal F1 car they forgot to put any effort into making it reliable.
Legend has it that the original car did not have mirrors. If the driver wanted to see behind them, they just spun out, looked behind them, and then got back to driving in whichever direction they wished to drive.
@@KurianKeralafromIndia Not a Lancia, let alone a Stratos. Kit car with Alfa engine, set up different with the performance highly likely to not be same as original. Top Gear crap for touting it as a Lancia.
If you're looking, you can see the toe-out of the rear wheels. Yes, it also has a wider rear track. And yes, that means the rear toe-in needs to be even more than a pure square layout, especially on a competition car. The driver did an amazing job only spinning twice, with such commitment. Hard to believe a simple tracking adjustment wasn't done between both filming days! Wasted opportunity.
@@ricochetVendetta the wheel alignment was all wrong at the back, making it corner like a drunk shopping cart, it's why every corner either looked like a constant fight or just spun
good point. The alfa engine in the kit should usually run at higher rpms, and that sound was an anomaly: you could almost count the firings per second of the remaining cylinders.
@@emanemanrus5835 yeah, it just sounds wrong tbh, The problem.is who the hell do you go to for a V6 now? Citreon don't make theirs any more and the delorean crowd made those stupid expensive, the Ford and Chevy are too heavy, too bulky and too agricultural. Alfa has the RPM, has the power but reliability isn't quite there. Jaguar maybe?
@@SuperHornetA51 it does in the wet when its got as short a wheelbase as a Stratos and using road tyres. The first Stig was a rally driver (you can tell by the lines) versus the touring car lines of Collins or.the F1 lines of.the last Stig and would have been a fair bit faster.
What? He spun a car designed in 1973 with one of the shortest wheelbases and then build by some bloke in his shed 36 years later? No, that cant be, they must have faked it! Typical of them! Come on, if the stig were to spin ANY car, a rear wheel drive historical race car, which is not much longer than a toothbrush beeing driven in the rain then that would be THE car. I love the stratos as much as anyone else, if not more, but there's no getting around the fact, that it wants to kill you when you least expect it to.
Lol I'm so glad someone understands. The key to the stratos speed isn't being faster than the other cars, it's being faster than the stratos' inner desire to kill the driver.
@@alunchisholm481 The Lancia 037 and 038 (aka Delta S4) was the Lancia group B monsters, iirc. I used to watch that sort of thing on TV 40 years ago. Wasn't it a Lancia that killed both the drivers and the class?
Majestic! Absolute animal of a car, and I suspect the driver was deliberately putting on a great show of powersliding. Brilliant though, and one of my favourite ever laps.
The original Stratos was designed for nimble rally stages with a very quick steering and short wheelbase. It's just too unstable for a long track with high speed corners, as simple as that.
I play a lot of driving sims and my biggest challenge was this car,Pikes Peak and rain..Possibly 15-20 restarts as I lost count and my temper a few times but when done a lot of fun.
Unstable? That would depend on the suspension setup, tire pressure and wheels. The original did indeed have an unstable setup, like most oter rally cars at the time, and having the center of mass in the rear doesn't help it either, makes it even more snap oversteery and I doubt they used sway bars back then.
Actually, the problems with the original Stratos, stem from the fact that it had *massively* adjustable suspension. This was one of the features that made it a serious combat weapon in the hands of a professional rally team, with the relevant trained specialists on hand to ensure that the suspension settings were correct. But, unless you ARE one of those professionals, with specialist knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of Stratos suspension settings, leave well alone. Because that suspension is *very* sensitive to changes, and worse still, sensitive in a deviously nonlinear manner, resulting in a complete change of behaviour after adjustments that on another car would be considered minor. It is ridiculously easy for an amateur to put this car into suspension settings that will see it in dangerous parts of the performance envelope *very* quickly. Basically, the Stratos is a sort of four wheeled Lockheed Starfighter - bat out of hell performance, but with parts of the performance envelope that even skilled pilots prefer not to enter. Some of them being prolapse inducing if you mistakenly *do* enter them. If you have the requisite specialists on hand, you *can* make it stable enough for track use, but even with that largesse on tap, you need to concentrate hard *all the time* whilst at the wheel. Those who don't, end up adding to the "widowmaker" legend this car has acquired. In short, this is a car you acquire, to teach yourself *restraint*, until you've learned the hard lessons it will teach you. If you're not already blessed with Senna levels of skill, you can spend over a decade learning how to drive this car properly, but those in the know will respect you for your effort if you do.
Lol it was expected for the thing to break down on the first lap since it sounded like a lawnmower. And damn that second lap was right out of Gran Turismo's multiplayer
All I see is triggered italians in the comments... Guys settle down this is NOT the REAL stratos, you can say it says stratos KIT CAR on the title and it is one made by HAWK. The body looks authentic but what's underneath is completely different.
The guy who built the car came out after the episode and openly slandered the direction they took in showcasing the HF. Apparently a few of the shown mishaps were scripted and the Stig bounced it off limiter after a cold start on his first drive, leading to the engine failure shown here. Given the guy took commissions to assemble kit cars for customers in the UK and the light it painted his handiwork (as well as Hawk kit cars in general), there’s plenty of reasons to be annoyed at BBC producers lol.
Those are typical characteristics of the stratos in the wet on the street , it can be quite lethal , it was designed to change direction on a ballhair in the dirt .
@@SparrowNoblePoland But then the 037 ended up being overspecialized towards paved stages - so much so that Lancia had to cheat to even stand a chance against the Audi Quattro.
@@alessandro.cattelan Eh, even a good driver can be caught off guard by one of these if they're not used to driving something like this. The Stratos is like an older Porsche 911, except more-so due to its shorter wheelbase. The moment you push it beyond its limits it will punish you severely, so you need to give yourself a margin of safety.
@@lookbehindyousuka maybe non english speaking users did not understand the kit thing. By the way if you look the car inside, the driver seat is at the right side: lancia never made stratos' with right side driving positions.
And due to this program Hawk Cars sold many more Strat kits, I know as I worked for them and if set up correctly that kit is very quick and stable. Set up wrong very scary!!
@@theravedaddy I've got a feeling that the Lancia marque is one of his favourites. Two cars stand out for Clarkson; the Stratos and the 037 Rallye. Both incredible racing cars.
Lancia: "Did you want us to build cars that are easy to drive or cars that win?" (most WRC Manufacturers' Championship wins of any manufacturer: 1974, 1975, 1976 [Stratos], 1983 [037], 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992 [Delta])
Just met a guy in east coast Canada with one, most likely a kit car, and said it had a 3.5L in it. Told me about the 2.4 ferrari Dino engine. Has an intergal rollcage and frame. Wasnt aware thefe were only 500 cars produced for the public. But he did tell me about the 73, 74 and 75 world cahampionship rallies.
Mi vien da ridere a vedere quanti italiani, accecati dall'orgoglio, non riescano a farsi due risate davanti alle "provocazioni" di Jeremy. Chissenefrega di come Stig abbia fatto la prova a tempo: la Stratos richiede esperienza per essere guidata bene. La Stratos vera (non la kit car) la conoscono bene gli appassionati e non ha certo bisogno di una prova del genere per dimostrare le sue straordinarie doti e questo lo sanno pure Jeremy, James e Richard, tutti amanti dello storico marchio Lancia.
You're missing the point. It's a personal build. a KIT CAR someone just built this at their house. It's made to look like a Stratos, and that's it, it's not a real Stratos. You can make a ferrari at home, and make it look like a ferrari, but it won't drive like one if you give it fiat punto parts.
Glenni, a lot of people who have tested listerbell and hawk built Stratos kir cars say that they're much much more reliable and better built than the original stratos. If you believe all these scripted events that happened in this top gear episode, I'm quite sorry for you. Check out more sources on the internet to make you final opinion, because you need a final opinion on something before you start teaching and preaching others. Which you do not seem to have, and look like an idiot.
It is a rally kit car with a very short wheelbase, less than 1000kg curb weight and depending on the tune, 230+ horsies under the bonnet, in the wet. Would be amazing to learn more about the setup though. Or a comparison to the Lister Bell kit... orr... ehm... More Stratos stuff...
I'm not even sure the car would be built now if Clarkson had anything to do with building it. There are only so many screws and bolt you can use a hammer to fit before having to resort to screw drivers and spanners. If by some miracle it was finished. Or now.
I read an Article somewhere that they actually did blow the motor up on the first run..and the spins were all staged. I think that Hawk actually tried to take Top Gear to court over this for Defimation of character...although I could be wrong. It was a while ago that I read it
Per tutti gli italiani: Non si tratta di una vera Stratos, bensì di un'imitazione, di una kit-car, di un falso. Non aveva nemmeno il motore Lancia, aveva il V6 Alfa Romeo, il Busso, se ricordo bene. Smettetela di difendere l'indifendibile. For whose who can't understand italian: that was not an original Lancia Stratos, it was a kit-car, a copy, a fake. It even hadn't the original Lancia engine, it runs on Alfa V6 (I think the well-known "Busso" engine).
If you take off the [conservative] fourteen seconds for the spins, this little kit car came in at a very respectable 1m 34s. Pretty embarrassing if you manufacture anything slower than that on the Top Gear board. I think that is why it "Broke Down" on the dry track.
