The Dallara Stradale is a sports car manufactured by Italian automotive manufacturer
Dallara
Dallara is an Italian race car manufacturer, founded by its current President, Gian Paolo Dallara. After working for Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini and De Tomaso, in 1972 in his native village of Varano de' Melegari (Parma), Italy he created "D ...
. The Stradale is the first road car manufactured by the company, the company's mainstream products being chassis development for other automobile manufacturers along with the development and construction of race cars. The Stradale is a
barchetta
Barchetta () is an Italian word commonly translated into English as "little boat". The term originally referred to a small skiff used for recreational purposes. It is also applied to some items of clothing, as well as being used in automobile styli ...
in its basic form, with no doors, but is convertible to
berlinetta
A berlinetta (from it, berlinetta; ) is a sports coupé, typically with two seats but also including 2+2 cars. The original meaning for ''berlinetta'' in Italian is “little saloon”. Introduced in the 1930s, the term was popularised by Ferr ...
,
roadster and
targa
Targa or TARGA may refer to:
Car racing events
* Targa Adelaide, in Australia
* Targa Canada West, in British Columbia
*Targa Florio, in Sicily, Italy, 1906–1977
* Targa Florio Rally, in Sicily, Italy, from 1978
* Targa High Country, in Victori ...
top body styles after the installation of interchangeable parts.
History and development
![2019 Dallara Stradale 2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/2019_Dallara_Stradale_2.3_Rear.jpg)
Company founder
Gian Paolo Dallara
Gian Paolo Dallara (born 16 November 1936) is an Italian businessman and motorsports engineer. He is the owner of Dallara Motorsports, a company that develops racing cars.
Biography
Dallara was born in Parma.
Automotive and motorsport
He g ...
had the desire to create a car bearing his own name after having worked with various manufacturers and overseeing their projects ranging from the development of Formula 1 and Formula 3 cars as well as Indycars and even designing the chassis of sports cars for other manufacturers, notable manufacturers include
Ferrari
Ferrari S.p.A. (; ) is an Italian luxury sports car manufacturer based in Maranello, Italy. Founded by Enzo Ferrari (1898–1988) in 1939 from the Alfa Romeo racing division as ''Auto Avio Costruzioni'', the company built its first car in ...
,
Lamborghini
Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A. () is an Italian brand and manufacturer of luxury sports cars and SUVs based in Sant'Agata Bolognese. The company is owned by the Volkswagen Group through its subsidiary Audi.
Ferruccio Lamborghini (1916–1993) ...
,
McLaren
McLaren Racing Limited is a British motor racing team based at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, Surrey, England. McLaren is best known as a Formula One constructor, the second oldest active team, and the second most successful Formul ...
and
Alfa Romeo
Alfa Romeo Automobiles S.p.A. () is an Italian luxury car manufacturer and a subsidiary of Stellantis. The company was founded on 24 June 1910, in Milan, Italy. "Alfa" is an acronym of its founding name, "Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili." ...
. The development of such a car was halted six times as the funds received from the completion of projects of other companies were invested in the development of other projects but finally, after accumulating enough funds for the development of a road car, the CEO of the company, Andrea Pontremoli was tasked with the development work.
Development began in 2015 with design work contracted to
Granstudio, a small Italian design consultancy firm located in
Turin
Turin ( , Piedmontese language, Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital ...
. Hours of wind tunnel testing was performed on the final mockups in order to ensure that the car was aerodynamically refined. Chassis work was undertaken by former race car driver Loris Bicocchi.
Dallara had been inspired by
Colin Chapman
Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman (19 May 1928 – 16 December 1982) was an English design engineer, inventor, and builder in the automotive industry, and founder of Lotus Cars.
In 1952 he founded the sports car company Lotus Cars. Chapman ...
's philosophy of lightweight minimalist sports cars and the final product, the Stradale embodied those principals. With a dry weight of , the Stradale has performance comparable to high performance sports cars while being driver-focused.
The first car was delivered to Dallara himself, on the occasion of his 81st birthday, at the company's headquarters in
Varano de' Melegari
Varano de' Melegari ( Parmigiano: ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Parma in the Italian region Emilia-Romagna, located about west of Bologna and about southwest of Parma.
The town is home to a medieval castle (''Castello Pal ...
, Italy, in 2017.
Specifications
The Stradale is powered by a 2.3-litre
turbocharged
In an internal combustion engine, a turbocharger (often called a turbo) is a forced induction device that is powered by the flow of exhaust gases. It uses this energy to compress the intake gas, forcing more air into the engine in order to pro ...
Ford EcoBoost Inline-four engine
A straight-four engine (also called an inline-four) is a four-cylinder piston engine where cylinders are arranged in a line along a common crankshaft.
The vast majority of automotive four-cylinder engines use a straight-four layout (with the ...
also used in the
Ford Focus RS
The Ford Focus is a compact car (C-segment in Europe) manufactured by Ford Motor Company since 1998. It was created under Alexander Trotman's Ford 2000 plan, which aimed to globalize model development and sell one compact vehicle worldwide. The ...
. The engine is reworked by
Bosch in order to generate a maximum power output of at 6,200 rpm and a peak torque of at 3,000–5,000 rpm. Bosch also worked on the car's aerodynamics and as a result, the car in the berlinetta body style is able to generate of downforce with its optional rear wing.
The conversion to different body styles was made possible by a removable windscreen made from motorsport grade polycarbonate glass and a carbon fibre frame. The windscreen has a shape and a central windscreen wiper reminiscent of the
Group C
Group C was a category of sports car racing introduced by the FIA in 1982 and continuing until 1993, with ''Group A'' for touring cars and ''Group B'' for GTs.
It was designed to replace both Group 5 special production cars (closed top touri ...
race cars of the 1990s. A T-shape removable frame combined with detachable gull-wing doors makes the conversion to a Targa top and Berlinetta bodyshell possible, but the driver enters the car in the same way, regardless of body structure (i.e by climbing over the side).
The base of the chassis is a hollow carbon-fibre tub with a solid carbon fibre side structure in order to channel air to the rear of the car. The air from one side goes to the engine while the air from the other side goes to the air-to-air intercooler. The carbon tub is joined by aluminium sub-structures front and aft. Two control arms are present at each corner, with the front arms directly mounted on the tub. The floor of the chassis is flat with a front splitter mounted at the front and a rear diffuser mounted at the rear. These elements combined without the optional rear wing create so much downforce that the format of the car requires to be fitted with reverse Gurney flaps that help maintain appropriate aerodynamic balance.
The engine is transversely mounted and is combined with a 6-speed manual transmission (also from the Focus RS) or an optional 6-speed
automated manual transmission
The automated manual transmission (AMT) is a type of transmission for motor vehicles. It is essentially a conventional manual transmission but uses automatic actuation to operate the clutch and/or shift between gears.
Many early versions of t ...
with paddle-shifters mounted on the steering column transferring the power of the engine to the rear wheels. Both of the transmissions come with a Quaife limited-slip differential. The Stradale comes with electronic stability control as standard that can be turned off and set to intervene as minimum as possible. The braking system utilises steel brake discs as the engineers working on the car believed that steel brake discs worked just as good without the added complexity and cost of a carbon-ceramic brake disc. The brake calipers are supplied by
Brembo
Brembo S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of automotive brake systems, especially for high-performance cars and motorcycles. Its head office is in Curno, Bergamo, Italy.
History
Brembo was established in Paladina, Italy on January 11, 1961 ...
.
![Dallara Stradale IMG 4365](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Dallara_Stradale_IMG_4365.jpg)
The interior of the car has carbon fibre as its main element and has all of the main controls of the car integrated into the steering wheel. Vital information of the car such as speed and rpm are displayed on a motorsports-style display screen on the steering column. The seats are carbon-fibre shells fixed to the chassis and have foam padding applied on them. The steering column and paddles are adjustable in order to alter the driving position. Minimal luggage can be stowed in two compartments located behind the engine and two additional compartments in the seats are designed to store two race helmets. The total space of these compartments is four cubic feet.
Other features of the car include Pirelli Trofeo R tyres, active racing suspension system by Tractive suspension which drops the car's ride height by 0.8-inches in track mode and an oil pressure accumulator enabling the fuel pump to withstand the 2.0 g of lateral acceleration the chassis is capable of generating.
Performance
The Stradale can generate a downforce of at in its basic form and with its optional rear wing. The car accelerates from in 3.2 seconds, in 8.1 seconds, can complete a quarter-mile in 11.4 seconds and can attain a top speed of .
Production
The company plans to produce no more than 600 units of the Stradale in five years offering a limited number of units for sale every year. Each car has a cost of €191,000 (US$236,000) before taxes.
External links
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References
{{ref list
Cars introduced in 2017
Sports cars
Rear mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive vehicles
Dallara vehicles