Cars with soul: Alfa 159, Lancia Delta and Citroen DS INSIDE

I didn't discuss thus far anything in this blog regarding one of my passions: cars. I am very interested in cars, and more particularly, on cars design, since I was a small kid. And today, while browsing the net, I found pictures of a new car which prompted this entry.

There are a few brands of cars for which I have a soft spot. One is Citroën, an old French label with a brilliant tradition of avantgarde automobiles. Another is Lancia, whose history is reaching a certain confusion by now. Another is Alfa Romeo, the chic, sporty Italian brand par excellence. Today I would like to make brief comment about them.

Alfa Romeo had difficult years at the end of the XX century. Their tradition is crowded of beautiful designs, but a somehow troubled financial years and not too focused head led to awful models which could have been done by any other, forgettable brand. Fortunately, some years ago they decided to focus on what made Alfa Romeo an important name, and they released the Alfa 156, an astonishing design evidencing that beauty is sometimes important enough to make concessions on utilities.
This design was so bold that it was directly continued in another beauty, the Alfa 159.

In the case of Lancia, they had a somehow similar, but less sucessful evolution. The Lancia Delta of the 80s was heading the list of winners in many rallies, but for some reason the Lancias became more obscure in later years. Until we saw the current incarnation of Delta, a truly astonishing design which deserves huge acclaim:



Now let me finish with the last prototype of Citroën, called DS INSIDE. The history of this brand is a model on how to get success while doing things differently. Now, Jean Pierre Ploué, the genius driving the design labs of Citroën during the last years, introduced a new line of cars, the Citroën DS, which will deploy a luxury range along the current, standard Citroën. The new images popped up recently and the whole image is nothing short of astonishing. Further information here.