Lancia Aurelia drop-tops: three steps to heaven

By Martin Buckley

| 2 Apr 2026

Classic & Sports Car – Lancia Aurelia drop-tops: three steps to heaven

The brilliant Aurelia was the car that initially saved the Lancia name in the 1950s, but it also put the firm on the road to bankruptcy.

It was a commercial folly, exceeded only by Lancia’s stupendously expensive commitment to motor racing.

In time, this uncompromisingly designed machine would earn Lancia a whole new generation of lifelong friends among the cognoscenti of motoring – people for whom ownership of an Aurelia became a kind of religion.

The Lancia Aurelia B50 Cabriolet is the only car here with a column gearshift

With its V6 engine, semi-trailing-arm rear suspension and Michelin X radials – all firsts – it reinvented the Lancia reputation for sophisticated engineering for the post-war era, but was so costly to produce in the firm’s ageing and inefficient factories that it couldn’t make any money out of the car.

The B10 Aurelia saloon, launched in 1950, stepped almost seamlessly into the space left vacant by the Lancia Aprilia – a cleverly thought-out family conveyance for the well-heeled middle classes and one of the fastest things for going around a corner you could buy anywhere.

If it didn’t quite have the lively character of the earlier, smaller V4-engined car, then Vittorio Jano’s advanced conception of a 60º V6 engine and a transaxle in the patrician surroundings of a spaciously habitable sedan made the Aurelia saloon the most advanced car of the early ’50s.

The Lancia Aurelia B50 Cabriolet’s cabin packs lovely Bakelite-rimmed gauges and steering wheel, plus a fabulous Condor radio

That the Aurelia was a versatile design with a proliferation of variants – from taxis to glamorous Spiders and show cars – suggests that it was built in volume.

The truth is, Lancia spread its thin resources over too many models and was not equipped to build more than 52 Aurelia saloons a week – even with a 5000-strong workforce.

With no economies of scale, it was hard to sell Aurelias for what they cost to construct.

The Aurelia concept was rolled out in many directions throughout the ’50s as Lancia, having relied too long on a failing market for its lorries, reaffirmed its position as the maker of Italy’s greatest and grandest passenger cars under the leadership of Gianni Lancia – who took over from his late father, Vincenzo, and mother, Adele.

The Lancia Aurelia B50 Cabriolet wears the Farina crest on its bootlid

The son of the firm’s founder was 24 when he took over in 1948 and the Aurelia was very much ‘his’ car, every inch the credible successor to the great Lancias his father had presided over in the ’20s and ’30s.

The launch of the specialised but catalogued versions of the Aurelia just seemed to compound Lancia’s dilemma.

As the Italian economic miracle gained momentum, the Aurelia B20 GT became a fashion item courted by racing drivers – Fangio, Hawthorn and others – and movie stars.

The arrival of open models – B50 Cabriolet, B24 Spider and Convertible – was as predictable as it was inevitable and these seemed even more evocative of La Dolce Vita.

When a pouting young actress called Brigitte Bardot starred with a B24 Spider in Roger Vadim’s And God Created Woman, the fantasy seemed complete.

The Lancia Aurelia B50 Cabriolet’s front end is similar to the saloon’s

Adrian Rudler’s Pinin Farina B50 Cabriolet is the least familiar of the soft-top Aurelias, yet certainly the most practical, with seats for five.

If the Spider – and to a slightly lesser extent the Convertible – represent the racy ’50s lifestyle for the playboys of the Riviera set, then the B50 seems a more respectable device.

Created on a wheelbase 50mm longer than that of the standard saloon, it has a certain plump elegance that characterised many cabriolet designs of the period – it could almost be an Alvis or a Bristol – but the unwieldy length of the B50 wheelbase is skilfully lost in the body mouldings and the way the front wings flow into the doors and turn back on themselves.

The hood, good-looking when erect, sits flush in its stowage area and gorgeous details such as the ‘PF’ badges, the tiny tail-lights and delicate bootlid handle are typical of the Italian coachbuilder’s detail jewellery that runs through the car.

This Lancia Aurelia B50 Cabriolet now packs Vittorio Jano’s 2.4-litre V6

Pinin Farina built 265 of these dropheads from 1950 to ’52, all with right-hand drive, a standard Lancia feature even in the home market at the time.

Some were specially finished with extra chrome ornamentation and even a power hood, but Rudler’s B50 has a manual top – probably no bad thing when you consider its already substantial mass.

Early examples had alloy bumpers, ‘eyebrows’ over the front vents on either side of the grille and a more tapering rump.

Later models, such as this one, had more chrome, alloy trim around the vents and a higher boot line. The B50 platform had the drivetrain of the early Aurelia saloon, which meant 1754cc and 56bhp.

The Lancia Aurelia B50 Cabriolet’s neat rear light

This car, however, built in 1951, was one of four that had its engine swapped for a later B21 2-litre unit by the works before it was even despatched to its first owner, Attilio Edoardo of Beltrani di Omegna, so in effect it’s B52 spec.

“I still have that engine,” says Rudler, a serial Lancia owner of 30 years, “but at the moment it has a B12 motor, bored out to about 2.4 litres.”

Rudler reckons the car, with a Weber DCL40 carburettor from a 6th Series B20 plus high-compression pistons – and an obscenely throaty exhaust note – is good for around 100bhp.

After a succession of Italian owners, the noted economist Richard M Goodwin bought the car and imported it to the UK in 1963.

The delectable Lancia Aurelia B24 Spider (closest) and Convertible (middle) look similar, yet share no panels. Classic & Sports Car’s Martin Buckley reckons that the voluptuous B50 Cabriolet is almost as good to drive, though

He kept it until ’73, but it was not until ’84 that well-known Lancia collector Ron Francis started to restore the by then rather fragile 922 EER.

Rudler persuaded him to part with the unfinished project in ’08 and got it back on the road in 2010.

That soundtrack is really out of character with a car that is about open-topped refinement for five full-sized passengers.

The doors are long enough that you could get in the back seat almost without having to fold the fronts down.

Once inside, you find the fat, featureless dark blue leather chairs comfortable – even if they don’t pretend to hold you anywhere.

The Lancia Aurelia B24 Spider features a wraparound windscreen

The sill line of the doors feels high – the car is narrow overall in relation to its length – and, other than the glorious Condor radio set, the impression is one of well-groomed simplicity with a hint of Americana in the big white steering wheel and the column gearshift with its toffee-coloured grip.

The V6 is smooth and flexible enough to trickle the B50 along in the fairly tall top gear in a decorous way, or accelerate briskly right up to 80mph in third.

There is nothing loose, floppy or indecisive about this column change.

The same can be said of the steering, which is similarly light and direct and gives you instinctive confidence in the B50’s ability to track neutrally and neatly through almost anything you can show it in terms of a curve.

The Lancia Aurelia B24 Spider’s stylish yet understated cabin, with slender, wood-rimmed steering wheel and Veglia instruments

The 50:50 weight distribution tells even in this ostensibly rather pedestrian Cabriolet and you can only marvel at how together this 60-year-old Lancia feels.

It doesn’t wallow, shimmy or squeal on its skinny tyres and, when you squeeze the big brake pedal that sprouts so assertively out of the floor, those massive finned drum brakes – inboard at the rear – bring it up short and square.

I can think of dozens of 1950s cars that would frighten the novice, but the Aurelia never would.

The B24 Spider should be more impressive still, and it is. But even if it drove like a rusty MGB on three cylinders, smoking like a builder’s flatbed Transit, you would still forgive it everything – such is its surpassing beauty.

The Lancia Aurelia B24 Spider leans less than the B50 Cabriolet in corners

Like all of the best-looking cars, it is a mixture of masculinity and femininity in equal measure.

Its curves hint at both tense muscle and soft, yielding allure – plus a futuristic suggestion of a jet-fighter canopy in the deeply curved ’screen.

Everything about this highly original Spider, owned by Simon Thornley who bought it from a long-term owner by Lake Como this year, is so special, even more so when you learn that just 240 were built (in 1955 only).

This is his second Spider: “I wanted one for 20 years and bought a car in Holland via the internet; it was good value but not matching numbers so I sold it to fund this one, which is slightly tattier but more original.”

The Lancia Aurelia B24 Spider’s crossed flags symbolised Lancia’s long-term alliance with Farina

With 118bhp from its 2.5-litre V6, it is the rarest and fastest of the trio.

Being based on a 4th Series B20, it has a de Dion rear set-up instead of the sometimes unruly semi-trailing arms that Lancia had pioneered.

Hop over the deep sill through the small door (with internal handle) and run your fingers around the large, wood-rimmed steering wheel with its polished alloy spokes.

As in all these Aurelias, there’s plenty of foot room because the gearbox is at the back.

The plush seats were a concession to the North American market the Spider was intended for, but they take nothing away from the driving experience.

The Lancia Aurelia B24 Spider’s small tail-lights

If Gianni Lancia had gone the distance at the helm (and not banished himself to South America in 1955 when it became evident that the firm was bankrupt), then we may have been rewarded with his plans for a Ferrari-eating, D23-engined Spider.

As it is, the stock version was not a really quick car – even in ’55 – yet there is an unruffled equanimity to the way this Lancia reacts to your every whim that makes it in my estimation something almost mystical among man-made mechanical objects.

There is such pleasure and satisfaction in handling it that you somehow don’t want, or need, any more power.

And it is not exactly slow. The all-alloy V6 engine (with steel liners), physically short and light, is also silky and flexible.

The Lancia Aurelia B24 Spider’s 2.5-litre V6 makes 118bhp

It spins freely and effortlessly at your behest so that the Spider always feels lively and sounds expensively rich and smooth.

There’s that usefully long third in a light, accurate floor-shift ’box as you wind out to 5000rpm and snick neatly into top for 90mph-plus cruising.

The Spider stops strongly – those big brakes again, with 148sq ft of lining per ton of car – and rides softly. Best of all, it steers delectably.

It’s light enough that you never feel weary, plus accurate and sensitive enough to make the best of the car’s flat and lithe deportment, even on surfaces that would make almost anything similarly fast and ancient just feel scary and old.

You can spot the Lancia Aurelia B24 Convertible by its more upright windscreen and opening quarterlights

In 1956, Lancia replaced the B24 Spider with the Convertible. The intention was to make the soft-top B24 more habitable and watertight.

The Convertible has a conventionally proportioned ’screen that’s a better match for the hood and bigger, deeper doors with external handles, quarterlights and wind-down glass.

The body looks superficially similar to the Spider but they share no panels, plus it had full-sized bumpers to fend off marauding American sedans.

The B24 Convertibles were built through to the end of Aurelia production in ’58 – to the tune of 521 examples, all left-hand drive.

The Lancia Aurelia B24 Convertible’s cabin packs a touch more glamour; all were left-hand drive with seats more shaped than the Spider’s

These were in two separate runs; the first 150 were mechanically in line with the 5th Series Aurelia B20 GT (so slightly less power, but more torque), while the second batch of 371 cars made between 1957 and ’58 had the latest 6th Series tweaks that gave 112bhp and, on the final versions, the fuel tank in the boot floor rather than behind the seats.

Visually, these later cars had a higher rear-wing line and a different bootlid.

Gerald Batt’s Convertible is one of the later type, which he bought from its second owner, a French architect, in Paris seven years ago.

“This is the first time that I’ve run it with the hardtop off,” confesses the serial Lambda owner. For him this is almost a “modern” Lancia.

The Lancia Aurelia B24 Convertible’s horn button

Under way, it just feels like an ever so slightly more refined, slightly less powerful version of the Spider, which is to say that it is very nice indeed.

Only in the context of the earlier car could you begin to criticise its exquisite but subtly more conventional lines.

While its extra kilos of bulk and handful fewer brake horsepower must tell somewhere in its acceleration, you’d be hard-pressed to notice.

The Lancia Aurelia B24 Convertible is fitted with the same Carello lamps as the Spider

It gathers speed with the same eager composure, corners with much the same neutral and supple assurance, and stops possibly better; the Convertible’s front brakes are bigger.

If it is slightly more Gran Turismo than sports car – in the way that the 5th and 6th Series B20s were less aggressive than previous GTs – then the creator knew its customers well.

I love the idea of a semi-hot B50 Cabriolet as an alternative to a big Mercedes-Benz or Alvis drophead if I needed four seats.

The Lancia Aurelia B24 Convertible’s all-alloy V6 packs 112bhp

If I needed only two, though, I would probably be quite satisfied with the wonderful B24 Convertible.

But if I was not ‘price sensitive’, then the purity of the Spider would always win out.

The B24 Spider – maybe the most desirable Lancia of all – leaves you with an impression of precision mechanisms in near-perfect harmony, and it is hard to pick fault with it.

Images: Tony Baker

This was first in our February 2012 magazine; all information was correct at the date of original publication