Most people who love the Lancia Stratos end up with a poster. Nathan Kennedy ended up with a ten-year project, a shipping container and almost every Saturday he and his dad had.

A car that was never meant to be common

The Stratos grew out of Bertone's 1970 Stratos Zero concept and Marcello Gandini's wedge, and it was one of the first cars designed from the ground up to win rallies. Lancia gave it the 2.4-litre V6 from the Ferrari Dino and built only around 500, enough to homologate it. The reward was three consecutive World Rally Championship titles, from 1974 to 1976. Today you are far more likely to see one in a museum than on a road.

A Top Gear episode and a decision

Nathan was 13 or 14 when he and his father watched Top Gear build a Caterham Seven in a day and try to race it. The idea stuck. "I want to do a kit car, let's do it," he remembers saying. "Let's build a car together." By 16, they had started. His dad had rallied when he was younger and built cars before, but by his own admission he had never taken on anything as challenging as this.

A big roll cage and a lot of Saturdays

The Stratos arrived as a bare space-frame chassis, "literally just like a big roll cage," as Nathan puts it. Everything else they made and fitted themselves: make the bracket, drill the holes, thread it, bolt it on, then realise it sits too far to the right and take it all off again.

Some Saturdays in the container ended with one small part finished and the feeling of having done nothing at all.

As close to the original as they could get

The finished car weighs 950 kg. It is rear-wheel drive with a limited-slip differential, and in place of the original Ferrari Dino engine it runs a 3-litre Alfa Romeo V6. "A close second," Nathan says, "if you can't get a Ferrari engine." It wears the Chardonnet livery in which Bernard Darniche and Alain Mahé won the 1981 Tour de Corse, the Stratos's last World Championship victory.

Eight years to the road

It took eight years before the car drove on the road for the first time. The first proper outing was to Dalkey. "We were so scared," Nathan remembers. Not of someone scratching it, but of whether it would make it home, because every bolt in it was one he had tightened himself. It did. "I remember putting the foot down and just being absolutely terrified." He has driven plenty of quicker cars since, and none of them compare: the Stratos is light, direct and analogue. "Every time I put my foot down, my heart is just like racing."

A Hot Wheels car on an Irish road

People hear it before they see it. Those who don't follow cars see something bright blue with stickers and yellow wheels and wonder which Hot Wheels toy just drove past. Those who do can hardly believe they are looking at a Stratos on the street.

Not for sale

"Me and my dad have both said that there's no amount of money," Nathan says. The plan is simply to keep driving it, and to use any excuse to bring it out so other people can enjoy it too. In his words, it is the best of both worlds.

Watch the full story in Drivers Stories 005 on YouTube: Father & Son Built a Lancia Stratos.