[9] Its exterior design was a hommage to Gandini's original 1970 Lancia Stratos HF Zero exactly at the 30th anniversary of the 1970 Turin Motor Show presentation.
The front was meant to have a Lancia shield but with protest from Fiat management, a stylised mg logo appears in honour of the designer instead.
[12] During the engineering consultancy work done for the Thesis model in 2000, Stola proposed a stretched limousine version, similar to the previous Thema and Kappa.
Fiat Group CEO Paolo Cantarella agreed to the project but under the supervision of Giancarlo Concilio of Centro Stile Lancia and engineer Nevio Di Giusto.
[13] Initially Stola planned to showcase the blue-gray painted prototype at the 2001 Frankfurt Motor Show but at the last minute Fiat management decided to postpone the presentation.
It is a static model of a coupé, created in just 5 weeks to demonstrate Stola's ability and speed in development and construction of automotive prototypes in a "tailor-made engineering" perspective.