Ravi Avalur’s 1959 Lancia Flaminia Berlina, designed by Pininfarina, is a black Italian saloon with a rich Indian racing pedigree. Originally imported and raced by Italian expat Dr. Cesare Rossi, it later passed to the Wadia family before being gifted to Ravi, who restored it meticulously, preserving original details and its historic competition number 31 from 1960s Lion’s Club races.
Like all good stories, this one too started with a conversation. I have known Ravi for some time now and am well aware of his passion for old cars and motorcycles. Originally, I had approached him with the idea of having him tell me the story of his grandmother’s old Ford V8, which he has lovingly restored and maintained for some years now. Ravi’s grandmother was one of those iconic ladies who drove powerful cars and rode motorcycles. And yes, back in the day when electing our own government was still a dream. No surprises that she passed on her motor loving DNA to her grandson. But over the course of that chat, months ago, he had casually dropped the word Lancia and followed it up with the word Flaminia. I knew then that, as part of the newest binge in Robb Report India's Collectors' Series, this would be the story that I would be telling you all instead.
I finally saw the beautiful black saloon with the huge competition number 31 painted on either side at Udaipur where it was adjudged second runner up in the Indian Heritage Motor Racing Class for cars at the Oberoi Concourse d’Elegance. Ravi has restored it to a point where it’s nearly in showroom nick and yet retained bits that didn’t need to replacing. The simple black and white checkered fabric seats, for instance, are still the original set that was fitted into the car at the factory in Italy. At the heart of this beautifully designed car by Pininfarina, is a 2.5-litre V6 with more than 100 horsepower, making it a very powerful and fast car by the standards of the day.
Now, Italian expat Dr Cesare Rossi had moved to India in 1953 and as an expert in man-made fibres and textiles, had founded the South India Viscose Ltd and was on the board of several engineering companies. A well-known figure in Bombay’s social circles of the 1950s through to the 1970s, he had a love for spirits, horses, and cars. Powerful and fast Italian cars. And he liked racing them. It was he who had brought this Lancia Flaminia into the country and raced it, too, against powerful adversaries like the 1956 Mercedes-Benz 300SL from the royal garage of the princely state of Gondal and the 1957 Studebaker Golden Hawk it was parked next to at the lawns of the Udai Vilas Palace hotel.
The story of the Lancia’s rebirth started with the placing of a piece of electrical equipment and Ravi’s neighbour. “One day, my neighbor needed to place it along our boundary. They came down my driveway and I sat very carefully with them to make sure that they would lift the equipment clear over the fence. I was sitting there watching them take this thing over my 10-feet high chain link fence when Walter Tresslor, the manager of the stud farm of the property owner, told me that Dr Farrokh Wadia (the owner) has this large black car and we don’t know what to do with it. I asked him do you know what it is and he said Lancia or something like that,” he tells me.
He went over and had a chat with Dr Wadia, the son of Faly Wadia who had bought the car from Dr Rossi. Ever the gentleman, Ravi wasn’t sure how he would broach the subject of acquiring the car with an old family friend and started talking about helping him restore the car instead. He first saw the car in June 2023. “I was stunned to see this pristine Series 1 Lancia Flaminia Berlina Pininfarina in the garage where she had been for 40 years,” he says. “At some point in January, he called me and asked if I would like to have the car. I reached for my chequebook and asked how much he would like me to pay him for it and he said to me that when a mare can no longer foal, we entrust her to one who will do her justice.” Having found that someone to take care of the old Lancia, Dr Wadia gave it to Ravi without accepting a single rupee in exchange.
Delighted, overjoyed and grateful Ravi was suddenly the third custodian of this beautiful Italian saloon. He tried to start the engine but she wouldn’t fire up, so on January 30, 2024, the wheels were freed and she was wheeled out into natural light for the first time in decades. Restoration started in earnest in July 2024 at the workshop of Ravi’s uncle Zaheer Vakil with Ravi working closely with Minoo Bharucha. Step one was to get her sorted mechanically before any work on aesthetics were to be done. Step two was to fix all the corrosion on the body that had taken place over the years spent in the garage. Finally, the aesthetics were worked on until the 1959 Lancia Flaminia Berlina by Pininfarina was shining in all her former glory again. The only thing that remained was to put her competition number of 31 back on the door.
“In the 1960s there was a car magazine called Motor India and in the issue February 1961 there is a picture of the Lancia Flaminia racing at the Lion’s Club races and it bore the same number. There’s another picture with Dr Cesare Rossi next to the car with the number very clearly depicted on the door,” Ravi explains.
In most cases, the story would have ended here as a happily ever after for the Lancia Flaminia and Ravi, but not this one. There is another chapter to this story that blew my mind.
“In 2015, I was attending a wedding of my friends Sharleen and Aman at the Turf Club in Mumbai. I was sitting next to this lady and we struck up a conversation,” he recounts. Turns out she was Esmeralda from Italy. “I asked her what had brought her to a wedding in India. She said that she and Delnar (Sharleen’s mother) had been classmates at the Cathedral School (The Cathedral and John Connon School, Mumbai). That’s when I put two and two together and asked her if her father had owned a red Ferrari 275 GTB C. She nearly dropped her glass in surprise and asked me how I knew,” Ravi laughs.
In 1988 when Ravi was about 15, his grandfather would send copies of the Indian Auto Journal, which he would read cover to cover. There, in an article on Ferraris in India – there were only eight in the country at the time, he had found information about the red Ferrari 275 GTB C owned by an Italian living in Mumbai. A piece of information that he had never forgotten and had helped him connect with Esmeralda.
The owner of that car had been Dr Cesare Rossi and Esmeralda was his daughter. Years later when Ravi acquired the Lancia and discovered from the registration records that the car bearing number BMC 9343 had indeed been owned by Dr Rossi, he called Esmeralda. “I went to Esmeralda and said, look, I think I found your car. So she puts me in touch with her son again. And this time, of course, her son is enthused by the fact that I found the car, remembers it being one of his grandfather's favourite cars, and he starts sending me a whole lot of black and white pictures,” he tells me.
In 2024, when he went to Milan, Ravi met Esmeralda’s son, Dr Rossi’s grandson, who introduced him to his aunt Barbara. “He introduces me as Ravi of Bombay and she said that she was Barbara of Bombay and had lived there for 15 years. He then tells her that I have nonno’s (grandfather) Lancia, and she immediately says quello nera (the black one). She remembered the car.”
The meeting was a fateful one because Ravi didn’t just return with memories, conversations and photographs. Dr Rossi’s family had entrusted to him a set of old audio cassettes where the old man himself had narrated three stories, each featuring the beautiful and fast black 1959 Lancia Flaminia Berlina by Pininfarina.
Ravi and the Lancia lived happily ever after.