Gianni Lancia

Italian engineer and industrialist who ran Lancia from 1949 to 1955 and took it into Formula One with Alberto Ascari

Gianni Lancia

Italian engineer and industrialist who ran Lancia from 1949 to 1955 and took it into Formula One with Alberto Ascari

Gianni Lancia, son of the company's founder Vincenzo Lancia, inherited the running of the family firm when his father died in 1937 and ran the carmaker in Turin from 1949 to 1955. A keen racing man, he brought the celebrated designer Vittorio Jano to Lancia in 1945.

In 1954 he took Lancia into the young World Championship and pulled off a coup, luring Alberto Ascari away from Ferrari. Ascari won that year's Mille Miglia, but Grand Prix results were poor and the cost of the racing program pushed the company toward bankruptcy. Ascari was killed testing in May 1955, and in 1956 Lancia and his mother sold the family's shares. He later ran a canned goods business in Brazil. He died in Turin on the 30th of June 2014.

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