1936 Lancia Augusta cabriolet Langenthal

The Lancia Augusta is a small passenger car produced by Italian car manufacturer Lancia between 1933 and 1936. It made its première at the 1932 Paris Motor Show. The car was powered by a 1,196 cc Lancia V4 engine.

During the 1920s, Lancia had been known as producers of sports cars and middle sized sedans: the smaller Augusta represented a departure from that tradition, and contributed to a significant growth in Lancia's unit sales during the 1930s. Nevertheless, in terms of volumes sold, the Augusta was overwhelmed by Fiat's much more aggressively priced 508 Ballila.

Lancia started its French operations on 1 October 1931. At its first factory outside of Italy, at Bonneuil-sur-Marne, Lancia built the Augusta and later Aprilia models, although named them Belna and Ardennes. Approximately 3,000 Augusta/Belna and 1,500 Aprilia/Ardennes were built.

Of the approximately 3,000 Belnas built between 1934 and 1938, 2,500 were saloons and 500 bare chassis.

Georges Paulin had invented the retractable hardtop and subsequently sold it to French coachbuilder Marcel Pourtout. Carrosserie Pourtout built several models based on the French-built Lancia Belna.

An intelligently designed car, the Lancia Augusta was also available as a bare chassis for the coachbuilders to dress it in their own style. This is the case of the car that is presented here, which would have originally been converted into a cabriolet by Pininfarina, as can be seen by the shape of the rear part, the interior and the dashboard. During the WW2, this car was partially re-bodied by Langenthal in Switzerland, who modified the front part by adopting a more fluid grille design and more in line with aerodynamic trends of the time. The Swiss coachbuilder had made some superb convertibles on the base of the Aprilia, but this car is probably unique. The result is a nice little four-seater cabriolet, extremely distinctive in appearance.

Descriptions & pictures by wikipedia & artcurial & flickr