A car for all seasons: the Lancia Lambda Ballon Smontabile

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Launched in 1922, the Lancia Lambda is famous for the many unusual and pioneering elements of its design, such as independent front suspension, a V4 engine and unitary construction. We can add to that list what must have been one of the industry's first detachable hardtops.

The common practice of sending chassis to coachbuilders to receive bespoke bodywork was never really an option for the unitary Lancia. It thus followed that the majority of Lambda buyers had to be satisfied with the Lancia factory's standard four-seat torpedo coachwork, although a handful were bodied as quite rakish Weymann saloons.

You could always buy a tourer and a saloon if you really wanted dedicated summer and winter cars, but Lancia had an ingenious idea which would save buyers the trouble and expense of keeping a two-car garage, and which no coachbuilder was likely to offer. The Lambda débuted with a catalogued body called the Ballon Smontabile ('removable balloon'), which was in essence a tourer sold with a detachable saloon top consisting of a wooden frame covered in synthetic leather. While the process of converting the car from tourer to saloon and back again required the involvement of two or three people and was, simply put, quite a palaver, no one could dispute the benefits of having what was effectively two cars in one.

The beautiful 1925 Fourth Series Lambda seen here left Turin simply as a torpedo, not as a Ballon, and was described as 'one of the most original and beautifully conserved examples extant' when it was acquired by the Louwman Museum just a few years ago. Its survival was mainly thanks to two very careful owners, Alfonso Roger Castiglione, who owned it as a young architecture student at Cambridge in 1936 - it is thought he brought it with him from Italy - and kept it until 1958, and Dr. Richard Hills, who cared for it from 1958 to 2011, keeping it in daily use until 1965.

Evert Louwman had been hunting for a Ballon for over 10 years before the hardtop section from a Fourth Series car became available in Switzerland. Of course, he had to have it, and was pleased to find that it fit just like a glove on the torpedo body of CY 1125. As with many wood-and-fabric bodies, the Ballon top was not especially durable and most would have been falling into disrepair by the time of the Second World War. Now, the Louwman car is one of only four known early (i.e. Fifth Series or earlier) Ballons to survive, though there are several later examples which have a simpler hardtop minus doors.

CY 1125 is now on display in Ballon guise at the Louwman Museum in the Hague, and offers an excellent opportunity to see an extremely rare Lancia which most people don't know exists. There are hundreds of other reasons to visit the Louwman Museum, too, but if you've got a particular penchant for Vintage saloons then the Lancia Lambda Ballon Smontabile really must be seen and appreciated.

With thanks to Hugo Modderman for his rôle in sourcing the Lambda and the Ballon attachment, and for supplying our information.

Words: Zack Stiling; pictures: Louwman Museum
 

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