Almost flawless
Look at this: a Lancia Beta! You had it in many different forms and almost all of them passed here before, except as you see it here.
In the 1970s, various car manufacturers juggled quite a bit with body shapes. The hatchback was on the rise, but at the same time they wanted to stick to sedans. This often resulted in special scenes, especially in the middle class. Consider, for example, the first Volkswagen Passat, which you had both with a traditional boot lid and with a hatchback lid. Or the Citroën GS, which started life as a four-door sedan and later became a five-door as a GSA. With the ‘little ones’, the Fiat 127 and the Peugeot 104 immediately come to mind in that respect.
The Lancia Beta Berlina, which looks a bit like the GS from the back, kept it a bit simpler. That was from the start (as the name said) a sedan and it would remain so throughout its existence. If you wanted a larger tailgate, you were dependent on the Beta HPE. For open-top enthusiasts, there was the Lancia Beta Spider and then there was also its coupé brother Beta Coupé. On the threshold of the 1980s, another version was added: the Trevi. A sedan whose typical shape also made it impossible to miss that it was a sedan, in contrast to the Beta Berlina, which eventually transferred the sedan baton completely to the Trevi.
Lancia beta.
The entire Beta spectrum has already been covered in this section, except for this Lancia Beta Berlina. Thanks to AutoWeek forum member Afentoe, that will change today. And he didn’t just spot a copy, let’s say. The Beta is shining beautifully in the spring sun. As Afentoe himself points out, it appears that the Beta was just getting to a cleaner when these photos were taken. Incidentally, there would have been some spots visible on which the Beta looks a bit less beautiful, but if you already find a Beta in the wild, it will not be any neater than this one. We are dealing with a very ‘late’ copy here, because it was registered in January 1982, so just in the year after the production of the Beta Berlina ended. That it is so late, you can see, among other things, by the Trevi-like nose, which in our opinion matched the Berlina wonderfully.
This wonderfully typical colored Beta has been in the Netherlands since 2009 and has since had two owners in a short time. Now he is with the third, who does hold on to it for a long time. Already 13 years ago those two came together and it looks like he or she still treats the Beta with love. The child seat in the back seat is probably a sign of regular action. That’s how we like it!
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl