Lancia does not build many cars like the Lancia Kappa: a 4-door saloon / 5-door estate / 2-door coupé with Petrol engine, built from 1994 to 2000 when airbags, anti-lock brakes and Japanese build quality became the world standard. Its designer of record is Ercole Spada at I.DE.A Institute (saloon) / Centro Stile Lancia under Enrico Fumia (coupé) / Pininfarina (estate). Production ran to 117,225 cars.
How it came about
The Lancia Kappa or Lancia k (Type 838) is an executive car manufactured and marketed by Italian automaker Lancia from August 1994 to July 2000. It seats five passengers and shares its platform with the Alfa Romeo 166. The Kappa was produced with saloon, estate, and coupé body styles.
It was only built with left-hand drive and has a front-engine, front-wheel-drive layout. After its debut at the 1994 Paris Auto Show, production reached 117,216 units, over six years. The Kappa was manufactured at the Fiat factory in Tetti Francesi, Rivalta di Torino and was designed by the Centro Stile Lancia in collaboration with the I.DE.A Institute. Lancia had earlier used the Kappa nameplate for the 1919 Kappa, with evolutions called Dikappa and Trikappa).
The hardware
Under the skin sits Petrol engine; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. Kerb weight is 1425 kg-1580 kg. The gearbox is a 5-speed manual transmission / manual / 4-speed Aisin-Warner / AISIN or ZF Friedrichshafen / ZF automatic transmission / automatic. The layout matters: the engine drives the front wheels, the packaging choice that gives a small car a big cabin. The wheelbase is Saloon/estate: 2700 mm / Coupé: 2580 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
Where it sits in Lancia's history is not in doubt: the Lancia Thema came before it; the Lancia Thesis followed it; it was built at Rivalta di Torino. On a showroom list of its day it stood against the Toyota RAV4, the Subaru Outback, the Audi A6. Its Lancia stablemates include the Lancia 037 and the Lancia 2000.
Lancia Kappa Coupé