There is a point at which a car stops being a classic and becomes a document. The two-tone cream and black open tourer photographed somewhere on the Sicilian rally route — wire wheels, fold-flat windscreen, running boards, coachbuilt bodywork in that particular interwar combination of cream upper panels over black fenders — has crossed that threshold. It belongs to the late 1920s, almost certainly to an Italian manufacturer given the event context, and the most likely candidates are a Lancia Lambda or a Fiat 521 or 522. The Lambda, produced between 1922 and 1931, would make it the older and more significant of the possibilities; the Fiat 521 series, which ran from 1928 to 1931, was the more common car.

Cesare Fiorio, Lancia’s competition director, decided in 1970 that the Fulvia — which had won the World Rally Championship in 1972 — was obsolete and that Lancia needed a purpose-built rally car rather than an adapted road car. The car that resulted from this decision was designed by Bertone’s Marcello Gandini, powered by the Ferrari Dino 246’s 2.4-liter V6, and homologated for competition by producing exactly 492 road cars. It won the World Rally Championship in 1974, 1975, and 1976. Then Fiat, which owned Lancia, withdrew works support. The Stratos was replaced by the Fiat 131 Abarth. The absurdity of this decision is apparent in retrospect.