Lancia 037 Stradale
Why 3.8: A supercharged 2.0-liter four, mid-mounted, RWD only — the last car to win the WRC without all-wheel drive, a record that by definition can never be broken. Roughly 200 built to homologate the works rally car; Lancia beat Audi's AWD quattros to the 1983 title on chassis balance alone.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €46k (1982) → €966k (2026), trending up · illustrative data
The long version
By 1982 Lancia could see Audi's quattro coming and knew a conventional RWD car couldn't out-grip it in the wet or on loose gravel, so instead of chasing AWD complexity Lancia leaned into what a lightweight, mid-engined, supercharged car could still do better: change direction. The gamble paid off in 1983, when Lancia beat the AWD Audis to the manufacturers' title — the last time a two-wheel-drive car won the World Rally Championship outright. The Stradale road version that homologated it shares the race car's basic recipe at a fraction of the power, and it drives like exactly what it is: a race car with license plates, twitchy, immediate, and entirely without modern assists. Fewer than a handful were ever sold new in the US, so ownership here is a 25-year-import-rule story from end to end, and the market has recognized the last-of-its-kind narrative hard — auction results have roughly doubled since 2019, with top examples now well past $900,000. At that money the cars that still get trailered to historic rallies are the exception; most sit in climate-controlled storage between concours appearances.