Lancia Nea - Tripmate: a car for a friend

Nea, or new - if you prefer. A good name for a concept car that offers some of the advanced features already seen on the earlier, bigger Lancia Dialogos: maximum on-board well-being; adaptability to personal driver and passenger needs; a stress-free drive. But that also adds some new features of its own, such as the ability to communicate. In other words, making full use of communication potential between car and driver and also between the car and the rest of the world.

The Lancia Nea incorporates all these attributes to allow us a glimpse of the way compact cars (the Nea is 4.10 metres long) will look in the future. It also continues the spirit of innovation that has run like a thread through Lancia's history, past and present.

This prototype, described as a 'tripmate' or travelling companion, displays the following features:

• spare, imaginative styling;
• fully conversant with the very latest computer and communications technology that makes information, communication and entertainment resources available at all times;
• simple to use because it makes use of new, user-friendly technology that offers help discreetly without getting in the way;
• a forward-looking ability to help the driver keep an eye on the road and other vehicles and warn of the onset of dangerous situations. This car sees safety from another angle, i.e. it sets out to avoid an accident, not to minimise damage once an accident has taken place;
• true Lancia determination to use an incredible distillate of sophisticated technology for a single purpose: to ensure maximum on-board well-being and the satisfaction of a relaxed drive.

The Lancia Nea carries on the down-to-earth approach first introduced with the Dialogos. In other words, it is not a prototype in the sense of a purely theoretical exercise or a Motor Show dream car. Instead it embodies a whole set of solutions that could be produced on an industrial scale and are destined to appear on standard production cars sooner or later.

Because the Lancia Nea is a working prototype that can show all its new features in action.