CONTENTS

HISTORY OF THE DELTA INTEGRALE

The Lancia Delta, designed by Giorgetto Guigiaro of Italdesign, was Lancia’s entrance to the emerging new market of the two-volume hatchback. Guigiaro had just completed his design work on the Golf mark I, a car that had put Volkswagen back on the road to being profitable. The little Lancia was again a trend setter by being the first production car with bumpers colour coded to match the body, a styling clue that was soon adopted by all other car manufacturers. Announced to the public at the 1979 Frankfurt Motorshow, The Delta was crowned with the “Car of the Year” in 1980.

Although the Delta was born with a more modest lifestyle in mind, in 1982 a concept Delta with 4 wheel drive transmission and a turbo charged 1585cc engine producing 130bhp, was exhibited at the Turin Motor Show. The car was well received and initial test results showed the car had potential but suffered from some understeer.

When Lancia decided to enter the rally arena again after Fiat had forced Lancia to retire its very successful Stratos (to promote its own 131 Abarth), Lancia was not convinced the Quattro concept as put forward by Audi would be the way forward. Lancia’s competition manager at that time, Cesare Fiorio decided not to proceed with 4 wheel drive but with a rear wheel drive, super charged, mid-engined coupe based on the centre section of the Beta Montecarlo. The 037 was born. The car immediately proved successful, mainly because of its manoeuvrability and its ability to produce enormous torque and traction at low engine speeds (because of the supercharger). Despite the tremendous success of the Audi, Lancia once again dominated in 1983, winning the world rally championship.

However, the writing was on the wall and halfway 1983 Lancia had realised they would be unable to hold off the Quattro for much longer. The 038 development started – the new car would be based on lessons learned from designing the 4 wheel drive delta a year earlier AND on the experience taken from competing with the 037. The Delta S4 was born, a 4 wheel drive fitted with a purpose built 1750cc supercharged & turbocharged engine, producing around 480 – 500 bhp. Since Abarth (the Fiat/Lancia competition department) had very little experience with both turbo charging and 4 wheel drive transmissions, the car was under development for several years during which the 037 tried to fend off the competition. Finally, after the 037 bowed out in San Remo in 1985, the S4 entered the WRC arena. The S4’s debut was spectacular – it scored 2 outright victories in both the RAC and Monte Carlo rallies....Unfortunately, due to the ever increasing speeds of the Group B rally cars AND because of the irresponsible and reckless behaviour of the spectators, the Portuguese event in March was tainted by the death of several spectators, due to a car losing control. When Henri Toivonen, Lancia’s ace driver, lost control again in the following Tour de Corse rally and killed himself and his co-driver, the president of the FISA announced the Group B rules would be replaced by the lesser Group A touring car rules by the end of the 1986 season. This decision was a serious blow to Lancia’s direct competition because none of the 3 main manufacturers – Peugeot, Audi and Ford – had a car in their range suitable for conversion to a full blown rally car.

Lancia however, had just launched the Delta HF4WD, building on the success of the Delta range and the S4’s short but high profile campaign. The HF4WD’s specifications lend themselves perfectly for the development of a competition car.

This integrale ancestor had a close resemblance to the flagship of the standard Delta range, the front wheel drive HF Turbo ie. New external features were the four headlights, the fog lights in the bumper, small side skirts, raised air intakes on the bonnet and badges all around. The main difference however was under the skin - Lancia’s experience with the S4 had resulted in a totally new drive train: a Torsen differential was used on the rear axle, the centre was equipped with a Ferguson viscous-coupling, the front used a free-floating type. This set up was miles ahead of the competition. Furthermore, the 1600cc engine was replaced by the engine of the Thema ie Turbo, a turbo charged and intercooled version of the Aurelio Lampredi 1995cc twin cam, producing 165bhp. The engine was a state of the art performance engine, putting Lancia right at the front of performance technology – it had an over-boost facility temporarily increasing the turbo pressure when accelerating hard, twin counter rotating balancer shafts to increase smoothness and a Marelli-IAW ignition system. Lancia entered the car into the WRC and convincingly won the 1987 season.

In September 1987, Lancia announced the HF4WD’s successor at the Frankfurt Motorshow – the Delta HF Integrale. The new car addressed the shortcoming of the HF4WD, to keep ahead of the competition – the overall weight was reduced, the wheel arches widened to make room for greater suspension travel, to allow for wider tyres and to increase the cooling area around the engine. Furthermore the mirrors were now colour coded, the side skirts reshaped and new badges introduced al around. The engine received a larger Garrett T3 turbo charger, a larger intercooler and overboost valve and some of the internals were replaced. The new car now produced 185bhp. Again Lancia had a produced a winner and the 1988 WRC season again went their way.

In May 1989, Lancia introduced the new model to the press in Turin – the Delta HF Integrale 16V. Externally not different from the 8V apart from the larger wheels (205/50), different badging and the extra bulge on the bonnet to house the new engine. The new power plant raised the power output further to 200bhp. To ensure all this extra power was transferred to the road, shorter and stiffer springs were fitted, combined with bigger shock absorbers and front anti-roll bar. The torque split was changed from 56/44 (front/rear) to 47/53 and ABS was now available as an option. Although the competition clearly was closing the gap, Lancia proved once again it had the resources, the engineers and the cars to win the 1989 and 1990 season.

In October 1991, Lancia produced the Delta HF Integrale Evoluzione I model, sometimes referred to as Deltona (big Delta). The car had much wider wheel arches to allow for a wider track front & rear and longer suspension travel. The increase in width initially was also planned to allow for 4-wheel steering, however, due to time constraints linked to the competition pressure, this idea was abandoned. The Evoluzione I also had additional air intakes, larger exhaust piping, bigger front brakes with 2 pot aluminium calipers and a radiator to cool the power steering fluid amongst other minor changes. The car was fitted with the 16V engine with a slightly increased output of 210bhp. A front strut brace was added to provide greater body stiffness. Externally the modifications included a new bonnet, bumpers, front and rear wings, side skirts, front light clusters, 5 studded aluminium wheels, instrumentation, steering wheel and the addition of an aluminium tailgate spoiler to improve down force at high speed.

On 18 December 1991 however, Fiat instructed Lancia to cease all rally activities. 5 World titles in a row was sufficient and the cost of maintaining a full rally team with all the associated development costs was too much. Luckily Mr. Lombardi, Lancia's head engineer, negotiated to at least hand over all the already produced Evoluzione rally cars (including all spares) to the newly created “Jolly Club Martini Racing team”. Despite this initial set back, the little Lancia won an incredible 6th consecutive world title in 1992!

By June 1993 Lancia produced a 3-way catalytic converter equipped version of the 16V engine and fitted it in the new model, the Delta HF Integrale Evoluzione II . Output once again was increased to 215bhp, mainly through the use of a totally new engine management system (still the excellent Magneti-Marelli IAW but running at 8MHz and using double the memory capacity compared to the previous ECU). On top of this, a more sophisticated knock sensor, a double ignition coil with dual outputs on each coil, a contact-less ignition and a smaller water cooled Garrett Turbo charger were fitted to the engine block. Externally the modifications were modest: 16" wheels, colour coded roof mouldings and solar control glass were added. Inside the car was now fitted out with bucket seats and air condition became standard. Since this model was never intended to be used as a FIA Group A homologation special, Lancia took the opportunity to produce a more civilized and progressive car. The smaller turbocharger resulted in less turbo lag but also less engine responsiveness in high revs.

The last Delta Integrale left the Maggiora factory in November 1994....The end of the most dominating car the rally world has ever seen, the end of an era in world rally championship.... But the beginning of a legend.... Even today, many years after the last Integrale won a WRC event, the car is still regarded as one of the best cars ever built. In its days, it outclassed cars far more expensive such as Porsches and Ferraris and it simply set the standard for high performance cars for many years after its production ceased. Even today, a slightly modified Integrale can still keep up with the best of the best....Its advanced engineering will live on for decades to come!

The total numbers of all models produced is listed below.