These rather nice new wheels have arrived with us today. We’ve been working on these behind the scenes for quite a while now and after a few design tweaks along the way, the first batch has just landed with us and also with our Stradale based customers in the US.
The objective with this development was to make something that recreates the look of the wheel which was fitted to the original Lancia Stratos Stradale cars. The twist however is that we wanted to be able to fit something a little more performance oriented in the tyre department. The Campagnola wheels on the original Stradale were 14″ diameter and the tyre choice for this size of rim can be rather old school. The tyre tech from the period combined with the fact that the same size wheel and tyre was fitted to both the front and rear axles in period maybe help explain why so many original road cars have been switched to the more familiar 15″ coffin spoke style wheels over time. These rims in turn can then be fitted with more motorsport oriented tyres in staggered sizes which will better suit the weight distribution created by the mid engined layout.
With these new rims we have tried to emulate the look of the original 14″ wheel but have scaled the appearance up to a 15″ diameter and we have also created a staggered rim set so that we can fit a wider tyre on the rear axle to better satisfy the dynamic of the car.
It is still possible for those who so desire to fit a period tyre such as the Pirelli Cinturato CN36 but for us we will look at the Michelin TB5 or TB15 for both the stance and performance.
Once we get the rims on a car we will post further pictures.
In the meantime please follow the link following link for a good article by Carscoops showing how the original Stratos looked on the original 14″ rims
