Giampaulo Dallara was recruited out of college by Enzo Ferrari himself and, after a stint at Maserati, was poached by Ferruccio Lamborghini to become the technical father of the Miura.
Yet the first road-legal car to bear his name owes far more to the tradition of the man the sprightly 81-year old admits has always been his personal engineering hero, Colin Chapman. So it is entirely appropriate to see a resemblance to Lotus in this doorless lightweight.
Dallara had long wanted to build his own car, but the project was delayed on multiple occasions by client work: his company is the biggest builder of racing chassis in the world, but has also worked on road cars as diverse as the KTM X-Bow and Bugatti Chiron.
Although designed to perform on track, the Stradale is named for its road legality and will be sold as a basic modular barchetta to which windscreen, roof and rear wing can be added and removed as desired.
The powerplant is very blue collar for a blue-blooded Italian: a retuned version of the 2.3-litre turbo ‘four’ from the Ford Focus RS, producing 395bhp. A six-speed, Ford-sourced manual is standard, with a clutch-less automated version of the same gearbox an option.
