FSO Polonez 2500 Racing ‘Stratopolonez’

If there’s one reason to forget all about the Group B machines from the world’s best automakers, it is the magnificence that is the one and only FSO Polonez 2500 Racing, affectionately known as the ‘Stratopolonez’.

It’s a tale of ridiculous ingenuity, the sort that seems to manifest after the Polish Prime Minister’s son crashes his Lancia Stratos rally car, as it happened. 

Andrzeja Jaroszewicz, son of Piotr Jaroszewicz, former Polish Prime Minister, was a rally driver who competed within his country and across other Eastern Bloc countries, even on occasion in  Europe through the 1970s and ’80s. His nickname? The Red Prince. 

Once famous for, well, being famous, I’m not sure Andrzeja was as cool a figure as Steve McQueen — but then again, McQueen never had a Stratos with “POLSKA” written across the fog lights.

According to a lengthy period feature on the Lancia Stratos rally car development as a whole, rallysportmag.com even has an entire — rarely-cited — passage devoted to the lore behind this particular car:

“A team based in Poland, which contested the European championship, was run by Andrzej Jaroszewicz, the son of the Prime Minister. Three cars were supplied through the Polski Fiat connection to the FSO rally factory in Warsaw, with Jaroszewicz enjoying the attention his lurid cars offered in what was then a drab Communist country. […] In the end one of these cars was repatriated to Italy, while the other two had been completely wrecked in action.”

“Sufficient engine, transmission and suspension parts were salvaged to be installed into a special circuit racing Polonez, which is still proudly exhibited in a technical museum in Warsaw. The remains of the other cars are widely rumoured to have been buried underground beneath the FSO factory.”

In that feature, there’s also a brilliant photo of Andrzeja Jaroszewicz in the driver’s seat of his Stratos, in racing gear, clutching the receiver of what looks like an old-school rotary dial phone.

At that point in his life, the parties, movie premiers, famous friends, and women outlived Andrzeja’s Lancia Stratos, which met its fate in the 1977 Rally Poland, as he was leading.

The tree was as untouchable as a son of the Prime Minister, perhaps more so, as it shredded the Stratos’ delicate bodywork to reveal the sweetness within: a Ferrari-designed V6 engine and presumably a fixable chassis.

All it needed was a new body.

I’m not sure who made the decision to chop up the Stratos and place the good parts into an FSO Polonez, but I have a feeling that someone above the Red Prince decided crashing Polish cars would be a better look.

In his 2012 piece on the car for Hooniverse, Kamil Kaluski wrote:

“This set of circumstances created a marketing opportunity for the new car (even if there was a ten year waiting list for it) and a new source of potential national pride (call it propaganda).”

Completed in 1978, an old version of its translated-from-Polish Wikipedia page once reported the first race to feature the ’Stratopolonez’ “…run by Andrzeja Jaroszewicz made three uncontrolled rotation around its axis but still won.”

In a country where the police- and government-issue FSO Polonez models had a waiting list, standard models with ‘just’ 112 horsepower was quick enough to outrun most vehicles on Polish roads, a more than 240 horsepower race car presented an interesting way to tip the scales in favour of the home team.

By all accounts I have read, its suspension settings and roll cage were rudimentary at best. Any one of the three other drivers besides Jaroszewicz to take its wheel in competition must have been brave, patriotic souls. 

I guess box flares didn’t make it past the Iron Curtain, but I find the ‘Stratopolonez’ cycle-style fenders to be oddly fitting as a solution for covering 330mm-wide rear tires.

With a radiator plucked from a STAR heavy truck and other modifications done, I’m sure, to just make it all work, its small design differences over the standard Polonez are fun to spot.