Rare Rides: The Lancia Beta HPE, a Reliable Shooting Brake Dream From 1977
Interested in lots of cars and their various historical contexts. Started writing articles for TTAC in late 2016, when my first posts were QOTDs. From there I started a few new series like Rare Rides, Buy/Drive/Burn, Abandoned History, and most recently Rare Rides Icons. Operating from a home base in Cincinnati, Ohio, a relative auto journalist dead zone. Many of my articles are prompted by something I'll see on social media that sparks my interest and causes me to research. Finding articles and information from the early days of the internet and beyond that covers the little details lost to time: trim packages, color and wheel choices, interior fabrics. Beyond those, I'm fascinated by automotive industry experiments, both failures and successes. Lately I've taken an interest in AI, and generating "what if" type images for car models long dead. Reincarnating a modern Toyota Paseo, Lincoln Mark IX, or Isuzu Trooper through a text prompt is fun. Fun to post them on Twitter too, and watch people overreact. To that end, the social media I use most is Twitter, @CoreyLewis86. I also contribute pieces for Forbes Wheels and Forbes Home.
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I remember seeing the Beta line at the auto show when they were new, and picking up brochures. Will we see a Beta sedan (Berline) featured here? I'm guessing that decent examples are extremely rare.
I have never seen these in Europe. Lancia was never a big seller in my country, but in the late 1970s and early 1980s they had horrific rust issues and the few that were sold probably did not survive long enough to experience their first winter.