The different variants of covid-19 now take names of Greek letters. A common point with many models badged Lancia, like the Omicron, a bus chassis that dates back to a time when the Italian brand also manufactured utilities.
By pronouncing the word “omicron” today, the chances that your interlocutor thinks of a Lancia are undoubtedly even less great than those of winning the EuroMillions jackpot. However, in the long history of the Italian brand, the compact Delta is not the only one to have borne the name of a variant of covid-19. There is also a model called “Omicron”. Or rather a chassis: you have to go back to the 1920s and 1930s, when the manufacturer not only produced cars, but also commercial vehicles. Proposed from 1927 to 1936, the Omicron chassis was thus intended for the creation of buses. It was available in two lengths, either 8.3 m or 9.53 m. In total, more than 600 vehicles would have been produced on this basis. The main customer of these bases then considered innovative will be the Rome urban transport company, and the last examples were not retired until 1957.
A choice of engine quickly criticized
Nearly a hundred years before the emergence of covid-19, the name Omicron obviously shocked no one. Especially since Lancia had got into the habit of drawing on the Greek alphabet since 1919. This idea was born from a suggestion by Giovanni Lancia, professor of classics and brother of Vincenzo Lancia, one of the two founders of the brand. On the other hand, there is another choice which very quickly proved to be rather unfortunate: that of using a large six-cylinder in-line petrol engine with more than 7 liters of displacement. The crisis of 1929 will indeed push fuel prices to even more spectacular heights than today.