Lancia Beta Forum

back in 1985 i passed my driving test at the age of 18 and promptly went out and bought an Exchange and Mart to track down the car i'd been longing for - a Lancia HPE. I found one straight away, advertised for £600 and after said sum had been paid i became the proud owner of MYU453P - a red 1976 HPE 2 Litre. And so began a love (and quite often hate) affair with all things Lancia that lasted  for about 7 years - in that time i managed to get through a further four HPE's, (a dark ceramic blue coloured late 1600, lurid lime green '77 1600, a silver HPEie and a battered gold '79 2 litre)  four coupes, (a maroon 2 litre '78, an off white '78 2 litre with just 30k miles and mint, a red 82 2 litre and a dark blue lhd 1600) one yellow 1.3s Fulvia and (when i was in the hate phase) a few Alfa Sprints too. The last Beta I had was the Italian 1600, still on it's Torino number plates, it was battered but went well until I wrote it off one evening when I was being young and particularly stupid. That was 20 years ago and i've no doubt my winding up on here is some sort of mid-life crisis! I've been gazing at pics on the internet for some time now, strangely though it wasn't until I saw a restoration project HPE on Ebay a few weeks back that I stumbled upon this forum. The project on Ebay sold for £180 i recall, as crazy as it would've been I nearly went for it - a bronze/gold colour car with those early alloys, a green interior (least i think it was green!) and a restoration that looked likely to be at the 'business end' of major.

anyway, enough of my ramblings - this was meant to be a 'quick hello' :)

Welcome Mac, your Beta history sounds almost identical to mine except I had Coupes over the HPE.  I also had a foray into Alfa ownership but with Sud's (the 1.5 tii was the best but I wrote that off being young and particularly stupid!!) but random complete electrical failures in the Alfas put me back behind the wheel of my favourite..... the Beta.

I know the car you were eyeing up on Ebay - that was one for the brave IMHO, but as you are no doubt aware there cars popping up all the time and if your handy with the spanners and have a bit of time to tinker then you have definitely come to the right place.   There is a wealth of knowledge and there are a good few members that can assist in finding parts.

Cheers

Hi Mac

As it happens a half decent looking HPE IE is listed on the forum today, maybe of interest?

Peter

Thanks for the replies gentlemen,

Matt - the car on EBay grabbed my attention because it was a pre facelift car, I loved the colour combination and I'm a sucker for lost causes.

Peter - as per above, I'm really looking for an early car, either a coupe or HPE, those brown interiors with either green, yellow or orange seats really do it for me!