Lancia Lambda History

Introduced at the Paris Motor Show in October 1922, the Lancia Lambda was the first production automobile to use a load-bearing unitary body structure — a monocoque hull inspired by naval shipbuilding techniques, engineered by Giovanni Battista Falchetto from a patent filed by Vincenzo Lancia in 1918. It was also the first production car with independent front suspension (a sliding-pillar coil-spring arrangement) and among the earliest with four-wheel brakes.

Approximately 13,000 Lambdas were built across nine series from 1922 to 1931. The body-on-frame norm it supplanted would not be widely displaced until the 1950s; every modern unibody car traces a direct lineage back to the Lambda.