Today's Nice Price or Crack Pipe Lancia Delta appears to be the proverbial diamond in the rough. The question of course is whether one needs to be Diamond Jim Brady to buy it.
The Mazda Miata is from Japan. Hello Kitty is from Japan. Put them together and you'd be turning Japanese faster than the Vapors, right? Well, not according to the 55% of you who voted yesterday's teen dream cat festooned first gen a Crack Pipe loss. Quite obviously none of you are sufficiently obsessed with J-pop to fully appreciate the car.
If that MX5 was a teen girl's fantasy, then their slugs and snails and puppy dog tails comprised counterparts may be more rightfully fixated on today's 1989 Lancia Delta Integrale.
FIA's Group B rally class was once the cage match to the death of auto racing. So extreme were the cars and the races that the organizing body had to kill it off before the series itself offed any more racers, spectators, or adorable forest denizens attempting poorly timed road crossings.
One of the most venerated and celebrated of the killer Bs was Lancia's Delta HF Integrale which combined the all-wheel drive of the base HF with flared fenders, a raucous turbocharged 2-litre four cylinder good for 182-bhp and zero to 100kph runs in under 7 seconds, and a bad attitude.
Here we have a 1989 Integrale which could mean it's the 16v - the extra valves adding 23 horses for a total of 205. Thing is, it's hard to say for sure as the car is buried so deep in snow - it is in Edmonton Canada, eh - that it doesn't look like the seller could get in to snap a shot of it with the hood up, and I can't read the badge on the back. For something with such legendary off-road prowess it's kind of disconcerting seeing it apparently stymied by a few feet of the white stuff.
It's also a bit of a shock to see so venerated a make suffer the indignities typically reserved for drifters and stance wagons, but the red-painted vents, slats, and the weird business at the top of the windshield, contrasting with what looks like black everywhere else is perhaps a personal taste kind of thing.
On the inside, it gets even more personal as the steering wheel has been replaced with a head from a Transformers movie, an indignity for sure. There are also what look to be mismatched seats and a general trashiness to the interior that's unbecoming of both a car of this caliber and a maple-blooded Canadian.
The ad claims the car has but 20,000KM, upon which I call bullshit. That's 12,000 miles and there's no way that anyone could own an Integrale and drive it that little. It'd be like marrying Sasha Grey and then never even bothering to knock on her back door.
Canadians get a lot of stuff that their neighbors to the South are denied. Easier access to a lot of cool cars being one of the perks of being a Canuck. This Lancia represents one of the brand's high points of the Fiat era, and seeing it in its present, somewhat dilapidated condition probably brings on a major sad. It's hard to say just how tough it might be to sneak it across the border should you not be so lucky as to call Canada home.
If you do happen to love hockey, moose, and being polite then you might just want to pick up this Edmonton-located Lancia. To do so, you'll need $7,000, and I recommend using those new twenties with the wrong maple leaf on them.
Of course, that would only be if this Lancia's price has you whistling a Loonie tune. If on the other hand you find this Delta dealer delirious for demanding so much dough, then perhaps it isn't a done deal.
What do you think?
Edmonton Kijiji or go here if the ad disappears.
H/T to Dan McKechnie for the hookup
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