Intro

[Geoff]

Hi. Glad to join the forum. Been into Lancias for a long time, currently have Aurelia and an Appia, all running and happy (sort of). Have just finished a restoration of a B20 - which you can read about on www.lanciainfo.com.

Glad to see a current group of enthusiasts, some of whom I know from other places.

One thought - could there be an "older Lancia" forum, or maybe Aurelias with Appias?

Geoff

[DJ]

Welcome, Geoff.

I've always said that I'll create new forums for any Lancia upon request. So you now have a brand new Aurelia forum to play in.

Now get out there and bring all those other Aurelia owners over so we can learn more about your cars.

[1,6 HF]

Geoff,

Welcome to this little corner of the Lancia universe--delighted you're joining us here. For anyone who doesn't know Geoff, he's a lancista of the first order, and his site is well worth regular visits.

BTW, there already is an Appia Forum (and it looks like there's a new[?] Aurelia Forum), both which you can find by clicking on "Forums" in the Main Menu at the upper left. So far there haven't been any posts on the Aurelia Forum, but there's occasionally something on the Appia Forum.

[DJ]

FWIW, I've also just added an Aurelia section to the Library (Downloads) section, as well as sections for Flaminia, Flavia, Kappa, and Thema files so please upload and share any relevant documents you may have.

Cheers,

[Geoff]

Geoff,

Welcome to this little corner of the Lancia universe--delighted you're joining us here. For anyone who doesn't know Geoff, he's a lancista of the first order, and his site is well worth regular visits.

BTW, there already is an Appia Forum (and it looks like there's a new[?] Aurelia Forum), both which you can find by clicking on "Forums" in the Main Menu at the upper left. So far there haven't been any posts on the Aurelia Forum, but there's occasionally something on the Appia Forum.

Thanks Ed, and DJ for the kind welcome. It looks like there is an Aurelia forum now, so I guess the lack of posts there will fall under the Aurelia fan's tree.....but the standard should be the Appia realm which has been a bit quiet as well. Maybe here we're just the antecedents to your more active Fulvia world.

Happy to join this new corner of the world. By the way, I once took a trip to Detroit for Meadowbrook, got there a day early to drive around Detroit. Spotted a small cluster of car types in a parking lot behind a book store (turns out it was an auto book store). Stopped by, chatted, and found some new friends who were very happy to take the afternoon touring all the old auto factories in the area. Saw the old original Packard plant, and Ford's Highland Park plant, etc.

Its always fun finding out what new friends can bring to the table,and what you can share with them. So we'll see....

[bmarler]

welcome geoff,
it's nice to see another appia owner on the site. i too agree that the postings for these cars are pretty rare. i'm sure that must be linked to the number of cars out there. you can see a few pics of my appia vignale if you click on the all albums tab. it's a little rough still, but coming along. are you going to post a few of yours?
best regards,
brian

[1,6 HF]

Thanks Ed, and DJ for the kind welcome. It looks like there is an Aurelia forum now, so I guess the lack of posts there will fall under the Aurelia fan's tree.....but the standard should be the Appia realm which has been a bit quiet as well. Maybe here we're just the antecedents to your more active Fulvia world. ...

Lancisti has always been a great place for Scorpion/Montecarlo and Beta discussion, but it’s only relatively recently that there’s been a lot of traffic on Fulvias. Although the scope of the posts is always a function of the participants’ interests, desires, and sometimes simply having too much time on their hands (I speak from personal experience in all three), I think DJ deserves a lot of credit for actively encouraging as broad a model coverage as possible, to the point of instantly opening new forums and download sections in response to any expression of interest.

But I think that’s always the pattern with such things; there’s going to be a de facto initial focus, that may gradually broaden in scope. DJ himself has been mostly involved with Scorpions, so it’s little surprise that it’s been an important focus for Lancisti. Huib Guerink, on the other hand, is a Fulvia guy, which probably goes a long way to explaining why the English-language forums on Viva-Lancia have more than 5 times as many Fulvia posts (currently over 5,300) as Beta posts (less than 1000), and less than 100 Scorpion/Montecarlo posts. On that forum, "Appia, Aprilia, Ardea, Artena, Astura, Augusta, Belna, Aurelia, Dilambda, Lambda and earlier" are lumped together in a single forum, with just about 400 posts among all those models.

I really hope that your participation, which I personally value as much as your friendship, represents the beginning of the next stage in the broadening process.

[Geoff]

Lancisti has always been a great place for Scorpion/Montecarlo and Beta discussion, but it’s only relatively recently that there’s been a lot of traffic on Fulvias. Although the scope of the posts is always a function of the participants’ interests, desires, and sometimes simply having too much time on their hands (I speak from personal experience in all three), I think DJ deserves a lot of credit for actively encouraging as broad a model coverage as possible, to the point of instantly opening new forums and download sections in response to any expression of interest.

But I think that’s always the pattern with such things; there’s going to be a de facto initial focus, that may gradually broaden in scope. DJ himself has been mostly involved with Scorpions, so it’s little surprise that it’s been an important focus for Lancisti. Huib Guerink, on the other hand, is a Fulvia guy, which probably goes a long way to explaining why the English-language forums on Viva-Lancia have more than 5 times as many Fulvia posts (currently over 5,300) as Beta posts (less than 1000), and less than 100 Scorpion/Montecarlo posts. On that forum, "Appia, Aprilia, Ardea, Artena, Astura, Augusta, Belna, Aurelia, Dilambda, Lambda and earlier" are lumped together in a single forum, with just about 400 posts among all those models.

I really hope that your participation, which I personally value as much as your friendship, represents the beginning of the next stage in the broadening process.


Ed -
Thanks for the good thoughts, again. I suspect we really have another issue here which is that the owners of the older cars are neither chatters nor bloggers, and that there just aren't so many of them. Some have cars in pieces, and dream of the day....Others, with the funds to renovate the cars, are in different places. Just seems that its hard to find good 1950's car owners who participate.

I've had this same discussion with Sebastien Simon, and he and I have exchanged ideas on how to promote this - as many Aurelia owners aren't likely to share their ideas in the vast open forums of the 'net. I don't know if they are right or wrong, but it just is.

So we'll see. You certainly know of my efforts to open up the communication front - the lanciainfo.com site is now getting up to about 10k in visitors over its 3 years (!) of existence. There's info up on Aurelia and Appias that isn't just common on the net. There are photos and a story on the Appia there, but I'll post some photos here too.

But there's nothing like good interface, so I'll join this party and see what happens!

Geoff

[Will]

Welcome Geoff!

I think you got part of the equation right, the guys with the older cars are typically older guys and not so familiar with "the internets".

The other issue is that people who have more valuable cars typically farm out their restoration work because they are more affluent and the consequences of an error on the valuable vehicle are greater. Compare that to a Scorpion that is worth a couple of thousand dollars in unrestored condition, and there is simply more for the average DIY-centric Scorpion owner to talk about as he tries to scour parts and find solutions amongst a myriad of options that have been tried by other who were not concerned about "originality" or "concours" for the most part.

I think even if there were exactly the same number of physical Aurelias as Scorpions, there would still be mre discussion in the Scorpion forum for this reason.

Anyway, welcome again- off I go to check out your website!

EDIT>>> Whoa, I don't know what you do for a living Geoff, but you are one hell of a writer!! I've been sitting here transfixed for, well, I don't know how long it's been but I've read your entire website! Thanks for making my day with all those great stories about Walt Spak and the guy with the Millers and Scotty. Some of us more recent lancisti have only seen the "end" of this era. By the time I learned about LPC, Kevin was more interested in other things and it was on its way out. I met Mike Krystick (sp?) at Carlisle one year, but there are less and less great treasure troves and fewer people with wonderful stories of those motorcars of yesteryear. Thanks for letting us live a little of that vicariously through you.

[Geoff]

EDIT>>> Whoa, I don't know what you do for a living Geoff, but you are one hell of a writer!! I've been sitting here transfixed for, well, I don't know how long it's been but I've read your entire website! Thanks for making my day with all those great stories about Walt Spak and the guy with the Millers and Scotty. Some of us more recent lancisti have only seen the "end" of this era. By the time I learned about LPC, Kevin was more interested in other things and it was on its way out. I met Mike Krystick (sp?) at Carlisle one year, but there are less and less great treasure troves and fewer people with wonderful stories of those motorcars of yesteryear. Thanks for letting us live a little of that vicariously through you.

Will - Glad you liked it. As you might guess, it took a fair amount of work. After you rewrite something a bunch of times, its supposed to get better. And they say computers save time? Well, they might if you didn't rework everything so much!

I'm an architect, I do teach and practice, and have enjoyed the written word. Check out the "library" on the site - for favorite books. Its always been a small dream to repay back the joy that Pomeroy, Borgeson, and the other greats have shared with all of us in their writing. Peter Egan is a good contemporary writer, and he captures well the spirit of circumstance and the reality of these bits of metal.

Not sure what to do with the new "Aurelia" forum. Heck, now yet another area to maintain. Anyone got any questions for that forum? Please post them, and we'll look for answers.