This car, Lot 148, sold for $649,313 (€626,750), including buyer’s premium, at Bonhams Cars’ Paris, FRA, auction, on February 6, 2025.
The Lancia Delta was born in 1979 to replace the outgoing Fulvia. The earliest Delta was designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro for middle-class customers looking for a special daily driver. Over the years, many iterations of the Delta were produced, but if we fast-forward to 1987, we find something remarkable. Lancia dominated the international rallying scene, winning six consecutive World Rally Championship (WRC) Manufacturers’ Championships through 1992 with various all-wheel-drive Delta models. While these racing machines were undeniable world-beaters, their origins can be traced to mundane Delta cars built for daily transportation. The preceeding Delta S4, however, was an entirely different story.
A fresh start
Lancia was flying high (sometimes literally) with its rear-wheel-drive 037 rally car in 1983, having recaptured the WRC Manufacturers’ Championship after a seven-year drought. Although the 037 victory in ’83 was a cause for serious celebration, Lancia had prevailed by only two points over the all-wheel-drive Audi Quattro, and the writing was on the wall. Other competitors were in the process of preparing their own all-wheel-drive cars for the Group B category, introduced by the FIA in 1982. This new racing group encouraged manufacturers to design and build the most powerful and advanced rally cars the world had ever seen. So that’s what Fiat, who owned Lancia, set out to do with the Delta S4. And it was in a big hurry.
The program was launched in May 1983. Fiat brass hired Abarth to develop and build the car. The project did not follow the typical pathway of creating a road car with rally racing in mind. Instead, the Delta S4 was a zero-compromise undertaking starting with a clean sheet of paper. Building Stradale (street) examples was just a necessary inconvenience to satisfy FIA homologation regulations. After much discussion, Abarth settled on a steel spaceframe which included both round and square members. This provided superior structural rigidity while saving weight. The design also facilitated access to the car’s mechanicals for repairs and was well suited for the required 200-unit production run.
The engine, while based on the venerable Lampredi twin-cam, was virtually all new in details, designed and manufactured by Abarth specifically for the S4. Starting with a lightweight aluminum block, an inline 4-cylinder engine displacing 1,759 cc took shape with a four-valve DOHC aluminum head. The billet five-main-bearing crankshaft was specially heat treated and was good for 10,000 rpm.
Clearly, forced induction was a large part of this twin-charged engine’s magic. To eliminate turbo lag, a supercharger provided one bar of boost pressure up to 3,500 rpm. From 3,500 rpm, the turbocharger added to the supercharger’s boost, and from 5,500 to the 9,500-rpm redline, the turbocharger took over completely.
Abarth had Fiat’s backing to stretch boundaries in every aspect of the car’s construction. This resulted in innovations (and sometimes patents) from nose to tail, including the powerplant, fuel injection and electronic-ignition systems, suspension, steering, all-wheel-drive system and more.
However, for marketing purposes, Fiat insisted that the car carry the familiar Delta name and resemble Giugiaro’s initial design. That job fell to engineer Renato Sconfienza, whose lines were later refined by designer Bruno Giardino. The 2-door coupe was not classically beautiful but engendered wonder, as if viewing an astonishing piece of origami. Giardino has stated that the design was somewhat limited by the car’s mechanical features.
Abarth hired Stabilimento Savio to manufacture the epoxy and carbon-Kevlar body panels, which were assembled as units including the interior, seats, dashboard, glass and lights. The partially assembled vehicles were then sent to Lancia’s workshop in Turin, where a small team finished the work.
Unfulfilled potential
There is no denying that the Delta S4 Corsa was one of the most incredible race cars ever built. Because of scheduling delays, the S4 missed all but the final race of the 1985 WRC season, but it quickly made up for lost time with a 1-2 finish at the November 1985 RAC Rally. In 1986, Delta S4s scored 13 podium finishes, including four outright wins, with Lancia finishing 2nd to Peugeot for the WRC Manufacturers’ crown that year.
Instead of being remembered as the all-conquering champion that Fiat, Lancia and Abarth had worked so hard to achieve, the Delta S4’s legend is based on what it could have been. Layered upon the car’s unrealized potential is the 1986 Tour de Corse crash, where S4 teammates Henri Pauli Toivonen and Sergio Cresto lost their lives. This tragedy was largely responsible for the decision to terminate Group B, adding further to the S4 mystique.
Superhyped?
I called the Delta S4 Stradale a “Sell” in a previous issue of SCM (“Buy / Sell / Hold,” November 2022). At the time, Stradale S4s were on offer through private sales in the $750,000–$1,000,000 range, due in no small part to an example selling at auction in April 2019 for $1.2m (SCM# 6899722). That sale seems to have been a lightning strike, with no public sales of a Stradale approaching this figure before or after.
I have always found the homologated-rally-car market niche intriguing, with the production versions elevated by the pure race cars’ accomplishments. Unique about this sector is that the street versions are often more different from the competition cars than they appear.
The road-going S4 Stradale was simply a requirement to race, not a passion project. Although the basic configuration was quite similar to its racing counterpart, the Corsa engines had higher compression, a higher-spec turbocharger and nearly twice the horsepower as compared to the 250-hp Stradale. There were countless other differences in the construction of race versions, including the use of special componentry, lightweight materials and a whole lot more. So the question I pose is this: Has the market overhyped the S4 Stradale based on the legend of the WRC cars with which it shares only a fraction of its DNA?
The current sale of chassis 0017 at $649,313 suggests that although prices remain strong for roadgoing Delta S4s, the perception of continuous value escalation of these cars may be changing. Our subject car was a well-maintained, low-mileage example finished in a rare and appealing paint and interior scheme. It ticked all the boxes and should represent today’s market-topper for a Stradale. Today I would call this a fair deal for both parties. In the future this may look expensive.
