Lancia’s Stratos is an incredibly special car, but more than its specialty, it’s on the thriving edge of simplicity. In an effort to design the car for the light race cars, Bertone and Lancia made the simplest and yet most efficient design. window mechanism I’ve ever seen. With just over a wing nut, the Stratos’ unorthodox window control is infinitely adjustable and completely infallible.
Due to the strange shape of the Stratos, there is not much door for the window to enter, so a traditional vertical window channel would simply not do. With a traditional window service, the real estate would have run out an inch or two from above. So, getting more out of the window in the door, enough to reach out for a rally an elevated time strip or something, it mounted the back of the window glass on a pivot point and made a curved channel in the door to which the front of the glass could cling. It is literally one moving part, the glass.
Although there are so many interesting things about the Lancia Stratos, from its rally history to the Dino-derived engine, I like the windows. Maybe because I really love this weird car and its incredible shape from a young age, and I get even more stunned by the things that most would consider pretty mundane. Taking a simple problem, like dropping the window and turning it upside down to make something so simple, is just a testament to the creativity and genius of the designers and engineers. who worked on this project.
In everything that is mechanical, I always look for simplicity and lightweight design. In all those years, I have never seen anything as simple and lightweight as the Lancia Stratos window mechanism. Up to this point my peak is lightweight engineering story was that Porsche manufactured the 909 Bergspyder’s brake rotors from toxic berillium. Sorry German engineers, you were overrun by the Italians.