Ebay Beta Offering???

[Jim Fierst]

There is an 81 Limited Edition carb'ed automatic trans LBZ on Ebay.
I have no interest other than my curiousity about the yesr. I have heard some leftover 79 got retitled as 80's but I thought 81's were all FI? ?

[davidb]

1981 DOM ?, not likely . More like 1979 . So it went from a
factory carb to injection then back to carbs ? What ?
If it's a limited edition where's the gold accenting [like
a JPS Lotus Europa] ? Re-paint ? ??? ??? ??? ???

[Will]

That is correct- all of the LE's are carbed AFAIK. And yes, 1981 is correct . You can also tell the 1981 coupes by the five horizontal bars at the bottom of the grill. AFAIK the 81 Coupes were FI, the Zagatos were FI in 81 or 82, the LE's were carbed. One of the Zag-Nuts can straighten this outif necessary, I'm going from memory.

If this is the car I think it is, it's a tad rougher than the pictures look. It's a solid $1000-$1500 car without too much rust, but it has a general shabbiness about it and needs a repaint, really a resto- and since nonbody wants an auto, well, $2000 tops if you are feeling generous. You'll put another $12K into it to have a $6k car, sigh....

This guy's lot is right off of I-95 by Baychester Avenue.

[1,6 HF]

If it's the same one I saw a couple of days ago, the chassis plate looked like it had a manufacture date of 07 79, which would explain the carbs. The five horizontal grille bars first appeared on the '79 coupes (I don't still have my '79 coupe, but I've still got a '79 factory brochure showing this).

At the end, some cars remained unsold on dealers' lots for a while; it may be that this wasn't first registered until '81, or it may be that the seller is confused, but this really looks like a '79.

[SubGothius]

The black'n'gold livery was available for '79 and '81 Zagatos only (any so-called '80s are leftover '79s, I think intentionally over-supplied to cover dealers thru early '80 until the FI system was ready for '81 models shipping in mid-late '80 or so); however, only the '79s were the "Limited Edition" of which only 500 were made. Those LEs were so admired that dealers demanded a similar option package for '81, so those were called "Special Edition", available by special order and not arbitrarily limited to any particular number of units (IIRC, don't quote me but I think ~800 or so SEs wound up being produced for '81 ??? ).

Assuming the paint job is original, the gold stripe across the trunklid (assuming the trunklid is original!) presents one easy way to tell a '79 LE body from an '81 SE body at a glance (without knowing the VIN). The make/model is stenciled out of that stripe on both versions, but the '79 LE says "LANCIA" on the left and "ZAGATO" on the right, whereas the '81 SE has "LANCIA ZAGATO" on the left and "FUEL INJECTED" on the right. As regards our eBay specimen: between the trunklid, the 120mph speedo and the carburetor-style air cleaner housing underhood, we can deduce it is clearly a '79.

QED. ;D

P.S. ...and we can further presume that autobox has got to go! I hafta wonder if this might be the same '79 auto Zag that Ed DeMartini's family was offering as "free to a good home" a couple years ago... And check out that OEM Sonata stereo -- just like the one my folx had in their metallic mint-green '79 Brava wagon! 8)

[Will]

Gosh, you guys know your Zags! 1,6HF, who/where are you? Did you mean you saw the CAR a couple of days ago or saw the ebay ad a couple of days ago? If you meant the former, you are local so I'd extend an invitation for beer(s) etc.

-Will