1980 Lancia Montecarlo

Exotic Ferrari looks for a Lancia price made the Beta Montecarlo a tempting and exciting addition to the expanding Lancia range when the mid-engined sports car entered production in 1975.

First shown in prototype form at the November 1974 Turin Motor Show, confusingly presented as both the Fiat X1/20 and Lancia Beta Montecarlo, by the time the finalised production model was presenteda few months later at the 1975 Geneva Salon, the more sporting and expensive Lancia brand name had won through to sell the Pininfarina designed and built mid-engined two-seater.

Despite its initial Beta badging, the 2.0 twin cam Montecarlo had very little in common with the other models in the Beta range. In contrast to the front-engine, front-wheel-drive layout of the regular Betas, for example, the Montecarlo adopted a rear-wheel-drive, mid-engined configuration, based around a modified Fiat 128 floorpan (as per its smaller Fiat X1/9 mid-engined sibling). This resulted in the model being likened at launch to a small, more affordable Ferrari, which shared the Lancia’s same Pininfarina designer origins.

The five-speed Beta Montecarlo was initially available in two guises; a fixed head Coupe and dearer Spider with an opening flat canvas roof, early models featuring ‘empty’ steel flying buttress panels, with glass inserts soon added to aid rearward visibility in response to initial customer feedback.

Braking concerns were also quickly highlighted by ‘early adopter’ customers, serious enough to prompt Lancia to suspend production of the Beta Montecarlo (renamed Scorpion in the USA due to Chevrolet owning the Monte Carlo vehicle naming rights locally) in 1978, with the model relaunched as the improved Series 2 Montecarlo (the Beta tag being dropped) in 1980; the revived production only lasting for another year, making this mini supercar a rare beast today, with production overall failing to reach 7,800 examples in total.