Lancia 834B / F105L

The petrol engines of the Lancia Thema — the 2.0 834B four and the 2.9 F105L V6.

They are Fiat group engines under a Lancia badge, which is the useful route in when Lancia material runs out — as it does quickly outside Italy. The 834B is a Fiat twin-cam, one of the longest-lived four-cylinder designs in Europe.

The Thema is also the car that carried a Ferrari V8 in the 8.32, which is a different engine entirely and not this page's subject — worth stating because it dominates every search for a Thema engine.

Their complaints are the era's: belt-driven interference designs on cars now forty years old, distributors that fail with heat, and vacuum systems that have perished.

Parts are the constraint and the survivors are largely in enthusiast hands, which is where the knowledge is too.