The Steady Special Astura

The Steady Special Lancia Astura – reborn and running strong for the first time in 50 years

Guild founder Michael Scott was invited by the Best of Italy Festival and Race to give the Steady Special Lancia Astura its first outing after a six year rebuild. This event included a hill climb on 26 kilometres of unrivalled closed roads in the heart of Emilia Romagna, from the base at the Castell’Arquato to Morfasso on September 16-17.

The organisers arranged transportation by the excellent Straight Eight Logistics team and comfortable accommodation for our plucky pilote Michael. Straight Eight collected the car from TIGOSE Life Member Paul Grist, owner of the internationally renowned Alfa Romeo specialist Traction-Seabert workshops near London, where it had just finished being painted and trimmed and had yet to cover any road miles.

The Steady joined a dazzling array of classics including Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, Alfa Romeo and of course, Lancia. All the cars attending ran up the hillclimb on a course similar to a stage of a road race of the 1930s. In spite of not having been driven on the road for 50 years, the Astura performed spiritedly and without fault.

As well as being the only unique car at the event, with its wonderfully evocative period sports racing bodywork, the Astura also won its class, although as a 1930s car it was the only car in the class!

Michael Scott commented on the event and the Astura:

“Best of Italy far exceeded my expectations, a great event and the Steady Special ran tremendously well and is a testament to the Guild members who worked on its creation. After one run up the hill on the Saturday, David Piper, who had driven his 275 LM on the rather bumpy circuit decided to save our older cars from further battering and see how well my Alfa Giulia rental car would go and he drove us up the hill with great elan!”