Buy The Forgotten Fast Lancia Delta For New Supermini Money

Lancia caught us all off guard last week with the announcement that the Delta HF Integrale is coming back, although just what that’s going to look like, we don’t know. Naturally, that news had us scouring the classifieds for the legendary original, and unsurprisingly, that had us gasping melodramatically at just how expensive they’ve gotten.

There are lots for sale, but none for less than about £35k-ish, at which point you’re looking at a tatty pre-Evo model. Fancy a more desirable Evo version, and you’ll need to stump up £60,000 at an absolute minimum.

The thing is, though, the hot Delta legacy didn’t end with the boxy original. In 1993, a second generation of the Delta hatch launched, but that was the same year Lancia pulled out of the UK, so it was limited to mainland Europe.

Like the cooking versions of the original, it was basically a very normal family hatchback, but like the original, it soon got a hot turbocharged HF version – and rather surprisingly, there’s one for sale in the UK. For sale privately on Auto Trader, this yellow 1998 example has covered 74,000 miles and spent much of its life in Italy, and is thus apparently largely free of the dreaded rot.

So, what did you get with the second-gen Delta HF? Not four-wheel drive, unfortunately. Lancia was done with rallying at this point, so there was no need to turn the follow-up into an all-paw homologation monster – it was FWD only.

But you did still get the same 2.0-litre turbocharged four-pot as the old car which, by 1998, was making 190bhp. This was at a time when the best the hefty Mk4 Golf GTI could muster was 148bhp, and a Peugeot 306 GTi-6 managed 167bhp. This power advantage was reflected in the performance numbers – for its day, 0-62mph in 7.5 seconds and a 140mph top speed were nothing to sniff at in a hot hatch.

We’re also strangely fond of the way this thing looks. It’s certainly not pretty, but then nor was the original Delta Integrale, and that’s not exactly hurt its legacy. ‘Of its time’ is how we’d describe it, but with ’90s nostalgia in full swing at the moment, that’s no bad thing. This one wears a set of alloys from an original Integrale Evo, too – nice.

We’re not going to pretend this is going to be a risk-free purchase. It’s a 1990s Italian performance car, for one, and one that was never sold in the UK, so we dread to think what a hassle finding spares might be. And obviously, it’s left-hand drive, so you’ll have to make sure you’ve got someone riding shotgun for drive-through visits and toll booths.

But compared to basically every other fast Delta, the asking price of £16,995 represents a bit of a bargain – and your odds of seeing another one are basically nil. Certainly, it beats the third-gen Delta that was sold in Britain with Chrysler badges. Shudder.