One to Buy: 23,000km Baldi bros. restored 1986 Lancia Delta S4 Stradale
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By virtue of its extraordinary state-of-art specification and 205 T16-toppling competition record, Lancia’s Delta S4 can legitimately be regarded as the ultimate expression of the legendary Group B rally era which took place between 1982 and 1986.
Conceived to replace the rear-drive 037 with which Lancia had won the 1983 World Manufacturers’ Championship, the Delta S4 made the necessary switch to four-wheel drive while in the engine bay was a supercharged and turbocharged inline four cylinder motor capable of producing over 500bhp in Evoluzione trim.
Unfortunately, it was a fatal accident that claimed the lives of Lancia team-mates Henri Toivonen and Sergio Cresto on the 1986 Tour de Corse that convinced the FIA to ban Group B cars from the World Rally Championship for 1987; after several seasons of grizzly competitor and spectator deaths, the Group B supercars had simply become too fast for the special stages.
Although Group B regulations stipulated that 200 examples of a new Group B machine had to be built before homologation would be granted, Lancia managed to get the Delta S4 rubber stamped after having completed a substantially lower figure – possibly as few as 70 S4 Stradale road cars.
One of these incredibly rare machines, chassis ‘033’, is currently on offer at the Girardo & Co. showroom in Oxfordshire.
‘033’ was issued its Certificate of Origin on December 24th 1986 and was sold to its first owner, Clipper Auto Ltd. in Livorno, the following March. It then passed through the hands of a few more Italian owners before coming to the UK in 1998. The car spent a brief period of time in the US before returning to the UK in 2018.
Today this Lancia Classiche-certified car has covered a little over 23,000km and is offered in superb condition throughout having been completely restored and enhanced to 300bhp ‘Potenziato’ specification by Elio and Giovanni Baldi in Turin.
