You Can Buy A Lancia Rally Car For Less Than A VW Golf GTI

There’s a good chance you’ve fantasised about owning your very own Lancia rally car. A Stratos, perhaps, or an 037, or one of the many hugely successful versions of the Delta Integrale. Well, now you can make those dreams come true… sort of.

This is the Lancia Ypsilon HF Racing, and isn’t it just the cutest little rally car you’ve ever seen? It’s a brand-new, ready-to-race turnkey rally machine from the brand with more success in the sport than anyone else. What’s more, if you live in one of the markets where it’s offered, it can be yours for €38,900 (around £33,500) before VAT.

There is, of course, quite a large asterisk here. The Ypsilon HF Racing is not at the level of any of those great WRC-winning Lancias, nor is it anywhere near the sport’s modern-day top level. It’s been homologated for the FIA’s Rally6 category, which, as the name suggests, is the sixth and lowest rung of the ladder that eventually leads up to the bewinged beasts that compete in the WRC’s Rally1 class.

As such, the Ypsilon HF Racing gets the same 1.2-litre turbocharged three-cylinder found in the roadgoing Ypsilon (and dozens of other small cars under the Stellantis umbrella), albeit shorn of its hybrid system. In this guise, it makes 143bhp and 177lb ft, sent through the front-wheels via a six-speed manual gearbox and a mechanical limited-slip diff.

It borrows plenty from the slightly more serious Ypsilon that competes two tiers above in Rally4, though: the bodyshell, interior safety components and suspension are all the same. Elsewhere, the ultra-junior HF Racing gets 302mm front brakes, 290mm rears and a proper mechanical handbrake, unlike the electronic one found in the road car.

Both this car and the slightly more grown-up Rally4 version mark a tentative return to rallying for one of the sport’s most storied makes, but also more use for the reborn HF badge, which once adorned the brand’s greatest performance cars.

The branding already appears on the Ypsilon HF, a hot electric version of the supermini that shares its fundamentals with things like the Alfa Junior Veloce and upcoming Peugeot e-208 GTi, but Lancia has more plans for it: it has confirmed that HF Integrale branding will appear on fast versions of the upcoming Delta and Gamma. Still no sign of a return to the UK market, though.