The Lancia Appia is a 4-door Sedan (car) / saloon / 2-door saloon (Vignale) / 2-door coupé (Pinin Farina) / 2-door coupé (Zagato) / 2-door convertible (Vignale) / 3-door Station wagon / estate (Viotti) from Lancia, built from 1953 to 1963, at the height of the post-war boom. Under the bonnet: 1.1 . Pinin Farina (Coupé) / Giovanni Michelotti at Vignale (Convertibile and Lusso) / Zagato (Appia Zagato) drew it.
Where it came from
The Lancia Appia is a passenger car introduced in 1953 by Italian car manufacturer Lancia as a replacement for the Ardea, and which remained in production for ten years. The Appia was the last in a long line of Lancia production cars dating back to the Lancia Lambda (introduced in 1922) to use sliding pillar front suspension. All three series produced had a 1089cc Lancia V4 engine.
In addition to the saloon, a number of special bodied Appias were produced, including a coupé by Pinin Farina, a convertible and 2-door saloon by Vignale and an aluminium-bodied GT by Zagato, as well as light commercial vehicle variants. In total 107,000 Appia were built: 98,000 saloons, 3,863 commercial vehicles, and 5,161 chassis supplied to coachbuilders. Following a custom started in the postwar years, the new model was named after a Roman consular road, the Via Appia.
Under the skin
Power comes from 1.1 . It weighs 820 –. It shifts through a 4-speed manual. The layout matters: a front engine drives the rear wheels, the classic proportion — long bonnet, cabin set back — that most people picture when they picture a sports saloon or a grand tourer. The wheelbase is 2480 mm S. 1 / 2510 mm S. 2, S. 3. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
In context
Its family tree is legible: it took over from the Lancia Ardea; its successor was the Lancia Fulvia. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Chevrolet Corvette, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL — show what else the money bought that year. Nearby in the Lancia catalogue sit the Lancia 037 and the Lancia 2000.
What it costs now
MotorJury scores cars on the United States complaint and recall record, and the Lancia Appia has none: too old, too rare, or never sold there. Its value today is a collector's question, decided by provenance and condition rather than by a class average.