Vídeo: Dueto: Lancia Delta Integrale HF e Lancia 037

🗣️ Transcrição automática de voz para texto.

The car we have here is a 1992 Lancia Delta Integrale HF 16-valve Evolution, a Group A homologation model. This car is a 1982 Lancia 037 Rally and is one of 200 cars produced for homologation in the World Rally Championship. The significant generational contrast we have here is primarily due to the regulations of the era’s World Rally Championship. Lancia already had a history of victories with the Fulvia, then later with the Stratos. And then when it comes to the Group B generation, it had to face a completely different set of regulations with four-wheel drive, but the timing didn’t allow for the immediate development of a four-wheel-drive car from scratch, so this car, the 037, was born based on a production model. What it truly stands out for is being the last world champion car with two-wheel drive in 1983 competing against the powerful Audi Quattro, which already had four-wheel drive. It’s a car built according to the Group B regulations, a car built in record time and it’s a car that ends up on the road, with a Stradale version born out of homologation requirements. The World Rally Championship regulations, as well as those of speed category, required a certain number of road vehicles with the same base specification as a racing car, that it be produced in a certain number to ensure that homologation. In the past, during the Group 4 era, it was necessary to make 4.000 cars, but when the Group B generation arrived, the goal was to reduce the investment for the teams that participated. And for that, they could invest in further developing the car, but the homologation version was reduced to 200 units, so they only needed to make 200 cars similar to the race car to ensure homologation. Then there are some amusing stories related to the fact that teams would sometimes hide the fact that they never actually produced the 200 units, or few manufacturers actually made the 200 units, which led to some interesting stories. When the Group B era ended, which was ended for the reasons we know, due to safety concerns, because the cars were very fast, as the popularity of rallying at the time was also excessive, the intention was to increase safety, and to do that the performance of the cars needed to be reduced. And so, the Group A era begins, and by then it was required 5.000 units of the homologation special and Lancia starts producing a race car based on the Delta, which was a model they already manufactured, and creating special versions for this purpose. This is a car born for competition, and as such, it has a series of features that make it very special. It has a roll bar, it has a sporty cockpit where the roof height has been increased by a double bubble. It’s a car practically doesn’t make sound, we have two seats, there’s no space for luggage, no comforts, unlike that car which is practically a family car. The Lancia Delta already existed when the Group A regulations came into play, so it was a more or less obvious choice for Lancia Abarth, the official team. Furthermore, when the Group B was launched, Lancia didn’t have any vehicle in its portfolio, the Fiat group didn’t have any four-wheel-drive vehicle that could quickly adapt to this reality so they had to settle for rear-wheel drive only. In the case of the Integrale, it was a completely different scenario because not only did Lancia have the Delta HF Turbo, but it also already had a four-wheel-drive system developed for civilian use. Then it was a matter of adapting this to fuction to the needs of the competition. The first version was simply called Delta HF 4WD. It had a Delta HF turbo engine, but with all-wheel drive, only 165 horsepower and the traditional body, without widenings. And although it was a car with its limitations due to being heavily compromised by the road version, particularly limited suspension travel, the truth is that it was a step ahead of the competition, so in that first season where the Delta competed, in ’87, Lancia managed to win 9 out of 13 rally stages and automatically secured the Driver’s World Championship, also the Constructor’s World Championship and naturally also won the European Rally Championship. The competition history of this car is shorter and its great success was winning the 1983 World Rally Championship against the powerful Audi team with their all-wheel-drive car. This is the last two-wheel-drive world champion. The car competed for a few more years afterwards, was replaced in the World Rally Championship by the Delta S4 and has a very interesting competition history in Portugal as well, not only on speed races with António Rodrigues, but also in the National Rally Championship with Carlos Bica. From a mechanical standpoint, this car is relatively simple, it used a central monocoque from a Lancia Beta Montecarlo, specific subframes were made for the car, we have a four-cylinder Lampedre block, and it has supercharging through a volumetric compressor which was a widely used solution in the Fiat group since the 131 Abarth. When the Delta was born, the volumetric compressor solution was already a bit outdated, because of the fuel consumption, because road use wasn’t as practical and conventional as the turbo, which by this phase was already highly developed, it was possible to have a road car with less turbo lag, with less dependence on high revs when the engine was without turbo and relied on that force to move, so almost all Group A cars were turbocharged, the regulations allowed for it, the cars had to have up to two litres of capacity, turbocharged. That first HF 4 WD version had only 165 horsepower and as the years went by and the competition brought out their new weapons, Lancia had to evolve the model. So in the very next season, in 1988, the first HF Integrale was introduced, still with an eight-valve engine, with a body already with slight fender flares. It was absolutely dominant, that year it also won almost everything there was to win, once again the three championships: Constructor’s, Driver’s, and European. And then the car continued to evolve, next came the 16-valve engine which had a bit more performance, once again it remained a quite dominant car and then, towards the end of the Delta’s career, as it began to potentially become less competitive, it needed to gain some advantages, where the drivers reported there were shortcomings. Once again, the suspension travel was one of the big issues, on dirt it limited the behavior a bit so it was necessary to widen the track, and gain space so the wheel could work with larger dimensions and greater suspension travel. So the car needed to be widened, and the story of how this emblematic shape of the Evolution came to be, with these very exaggerated fender flares, which give it all its charisma is very interesting, because Engineer Sérgio Limone, who is the brain behind Lancia’s great successes from the Group B era onwards, it was in one weekend where he and César Efiório at Abarth’s warehouse started studying how the fender flares should be and they went to a Fiat Ducato, cut sheet metal and they themselves shaped what would become the final look of the Evolution’s fender flares. At the time, they did what they could and the car was tested like that, and then it was just about correcting all the errors of the shapes they created, but essentially it was a form made by eye according to the mechanical sensitivity of what was needed in terms of widening, what was needed in terms of the car’s stability when cornering, so how much track width needed to be gained, and thus an emblematic formula and a aspect that still captivates many car enthusiasts today. Without diminishing the genius of the people who conceived these cars, the improvisation conveys much of the character in driving these cars. This Lancia 037 is a car that due to its weight distribution and especially due to the architecture of the rear suspension has an absolutely fantastic cornering behavior. The car, despite having a limited engine and a short gearbox, it’s not a car that allows high top speeds, it has a driving feel, due to the architecture of the rear suspension, the positioning of the engine, and the weight distribution.There’s a solution that was adopted and which later became, subsequently in many other cars, of a fuel tank on each side of the engine bay to allow a more uniform weight distribution that translates to the car an ease of cornering and a capability to corner much above the norm. And what’s interesting about these homologation cars, which is common to both the 037 and the Integrale is that they both have a very aggressive appearance and when we look at them we always project the image of the competition version of the car, spitting flames, jumping with great aggressiveness, with great violence, but the truth is that both cars are very easy to drive. The Integrale despite all this width, this aggressive appearance has a very delicate steering, which is not common in four-wheel-drive cars, because the fact of having transmission to the front wheels usually creates some additional weight that filters out all the sensations, but the Delta’s steering is very transparent, allows us to exactly feel what each wheel is doing and it’s very delicate, very light. The performance, now a days, clearly doesn’t impress at all, but back then it wasn’t anything absolutely out of the ordinary, it was more effective because of the all-wheel drive and the cornering stability, because it was a wide car that behaved very well in twisty sections. But that idea of an aggressive car is completely misleading, it’s quite delicate to drive, it’s quite friendly to the driver, with some understeer that helps an inexperienced driver keep the car on the limit, and understand what’s going to happen, only when really provoked does it start to slide at the rear, it’s more or less intuitive and it’s an extraordinary base for what would be the race car where they worked with another 100/150 horsepower more.