In 1922 all cars were built with a separate chassis. All the mechanical parts like engine, gearbox and axles were fitted to the chassis and a body was bolted on top of it. Often the body was built by an independent coachbuilder, though after 1920 an increasing number of car manufacturers set up their own in-house body department.

Chassis and body were designed as two separate entities and a chassis with heavy rails may look very rigid, but most certainly isn’t. With the Lambda Vincenzo Lancia did away with the chassis and made a body of load-bearing unitary construction. The Lambda was the first series-produced car to be made in this way and it was stronger, lighter and had greater torsional stiffness than all other contemporary cars. The body was an integral part of the design right from the start. Both the boot and the propshaft tunnel are important structural elements of the body, while fitting the seats on either side of the propshaft gave the Lambda its extremely low profile.
An aluminium engine of 2,1 litres capacity was of narrow-V configuration with a shaft-driven overhead camshaft. The Lambda was the first Lancia to have four-wheel brakes and independent front-suspension. This used a ‘sliding-pillar’ design where the wheel slides up and down on the king pin, supported on a coil spring and with a built-in telescopic shock-absorber. It combines a minimum of unsprung weight with a perfect vertical movement and is found on all Lancias till the late 1950s.