Goo-Net Find Of The Week: A Japan-Only Lancia Delta Edizione Finale

Welcome back to Goo-Net Find of the Week, a series in which we pretend we’re not procrastinating on a Friday afternoon by idly browsing the coolest online used car platform in the world, Japan’s Goo-Net Exchange.

We’re all too used to Japanese car companies saving all the coolest models for their home markets – just look at the Toyota Mark X GRMN we featured a couple of weeks ago. Such is Japan’s car enthusiasm as a nation, though, that this phenomenon isn’t always limited to its domestic manufacturers.

The country had a particular enthusiasm for the Lancia Delta HF Integrale, which is why right at the end of its production run, in 1994, Lancia said thanks with this: the Delta HF Integrale Edizione Finale. Or possibly the Collezione. Nobody quite seems to agree on what it was called.

What they can agree on is that it’s one of the most sought-after examples of a car that’s already hardly short on demand. Based on the Integrale Evo 2, and benefiting from that car’s range of engine tweaks, bigger Speedline wheels and extra standard kit, the Japan-only Edizione Finale built on that with a further round of changes.

All finished in Rosso Amaranto, they included visual tweaks, like the larger outer headlights, echoing earlier Integrales, and the blue and yellow stripe running along the car’s length, a nod to a rally livery worn by the Fulvia in the ’60s. But there were some performance changes, too – the Edizione Finale gained a set of uprated Eibach springs and a new OMP rear strut brace.

Most notably, though, it got a reflashed ECU to bump power from the 2.0-litre turbo four-pot from 212 to 247bhp. We think, anyway. Take a look back at previous auctions and sales listings for Edizione Finales, and some gleefully shout about this fact, while others suggest it had the standard 212bhp motor. Look, it’s a 30-year-old, very limited special edition of an Italian car made exclusively for the Japanese market – concrete information’s quite hard to track down.

However much power it has, though, it’s still about as collectable as Integrales get, especially because just 250 were produced. And if you know anything about Integrale values of late, you’ll know what that means for this 73,475km (around 45,700 miles) example, pictured next to an equally fetching aero-nosed Nissan Fairlady 240ZG.

Indeed, at an asking price of ¥15.84 million, or around £78,000, this ain’t cheap. Then again, in the past couple of years, we’ve seen (admittedly lower-mileage) Edizione Finales go for properly silly money – upwards of £200k isn’t unheard of. Once again, then, Goo-Net serves us up with a relative bargain. As long as you’re willing to pay the import fees.