HF4WD ex Lancar press demo

[theoldsmithy]

Hi all
Been a fan of the Delta for many years, had a GTie & a few HF Turbos when I was younger.  Used to see an HF4WD in local stage rallies, well in 2012 I got the chance to buy it.  A very good friend of mine works at Omicron just outside Norwich & put me on to it, I sold my Escort rally car & got the Delta.  It had been laid up in storage (after breaking an engine mount) from 1996 to 2011 before being shown at the Essen Motor Show in their '100 years of the Monte Carlo Rally' & then being up for sale.  Fair to say it needed a bit of work due to the inactivity & updating to comply with the MSA regs, but it all got done and so I did a couple of stage events before my navigator quit and since then it's been unused in anger as I can't seem to find anyone in the car club interested in navigating!

Anyway some of you may well know of it, I have nearly all its history starting out as a Lancar press demo car.  After 6 months it then passed to a John Gray in Drumnadrochit, Scotland who added the Martini livery & got the original MSA logbook.  He owned it about 18 months & sold to Ian Fraser in Norfolk who had it until I bought it in 2012.  With 'D199 XPN' it was originally one of a pair of white HF4WDs built into semi-rally cars to demonstrate to journalists how proficient the cars were at going off-road in almost standard trim, the rest of the HF4WD press fleet being red road cars.  Lancar had recruited Jimmy McRae and Mikael Ericsson from Martini Racing to do the driving.

In 1987 the cars were used at Bagshot testing ground, in Greystokes in the Lakes and at Glendevon forest in Scotland.  I managed to obtain an autumn 1987 copy of Lancia's own magazine 'The Marque' which had an article about the cars using reprinted articles from 'Motor' and 'Autocar'.  As it stands now I have only got the 'Motor' article, I haven't been able to find which issue of 'Autocar' theirs was printed in.

If anyone knows of any other articles about these 2 cars or which copy of Autocar the report from Michael Harvey was in, please let me know.  If anything of D199 XPN is known I'd be very interested to find out.  It appears on the DVLA enquiry page, but as last taxed in 1989.

Cheers,
Mike

[Rob]

I've always fancied a Delta HF 4x4 & yours looks spot on. You must be really chuffed with it  .

[Kevinlincs]

Cracking story and car, surprised you struggle to find a co-driver though? Guess it's a finance thing.
I did a bit of passenger seat stuff when I packed in on the drivers side, great fun. 

[sparehead3]

Great story Mike - and there's a price of £13980 for 1987 which we'll be able to translate into Today's money

Look forward to seeing it sometime !

[DavidLaver]

£37,384

[theoldsmithy]

Thanks all, yes it's a fun car to drive and always gets attention.  Not sure why no-one's keen to take part with me, I've hardly ever crashed - and certainly not this car!

When I used to see it being rallied in the 1990s & then got to own it, it had a different registration (one that I have kept on retention).  Because it has changed appearance with the livery I hadn't realised which car it was originally.  I sent off a V888 to the DVLA & found out from them, so I took the other registration off it & they reissued its original Lancar reg.

I had the Motor magazine already, it's on the cover of Fraser & Fraser's 'Supercar Classics' magazine (along with some of Ian's & other's vastly more valuable Lancias) from December 1989.  Also here's a couple of rallying photos from the 1990s and a couple from 2015.

[sparehead3]

Ah, interesting - D57GAS is recorded ( by me in the database ) :

Spotted at 2011 Essen Motor Show, complete with roll cage and slick tires

Recorded by SteveP on 04-01-2013 10:23

.... What I will do is link the two together in our database.

[theoldsmithy]

The organisers of the 2011 Essen show were arranging a '100 years of the Monte Carlo Rally' exhibition with an example of the winning car for each year displayed.  They obviously needed an HF4WD for 1987/88 & for whatever reason they couldn't get one on mainland Europe. So they got in touch with Omicron on the off-chance they knew of one, which of course they did.  However it had been in storage since 1996 when an engine mount broke, so needed a bit of effort to extract it from the shed it was in & to make presentable.  It was picked up, taken to Essen & then delivered back!

[Delta James]

My Dad was press fleet manager at Lancar UK
Here are is a photos of how it started it early life, the quattro ended up in Holland. Might have some more of your car, can check if interested.
Enjoy 👍

[theoldsmithy]

Hi
That's a really interesting picture.  Does look like it but I can't be 100% sure it is as from what I know that registration has never been on my car. The livery is also very slightly different to mine.  Do you know much of the 2 cars?

John Gray changed the registration (to one with 3 letters & 3 numbers) after he bought it from Lancar in late 87,  MSA logbooked it on that plate in the Martini livery early 88 (& had painted the radiator grille surround white which remained until I took it back to silver) & took that same plate off just before he sold it to Ian Fraser in Feb 89.  At which point Inverness DVLA issued the GAS plate, not re-issued the original.  It might have gone to 2DRY for a while but could only have been between the logbook & when it was sold.  To have rallied it, John would have had to change the MSA logbook to 2DRY.  However it could have just been stuck on for the photo!

From the magazine prints you can see both 4WDs were just plain white when with Lancar. With an Integrale being there on this photo, it must have been taken after Lancar owned the 4WDs as they'd sold them both before the 8v Integrale was released.

Great photo, I'm sure you have some nice stuff from then.  If you have any more of it or a higher resolution of that one I'd love to have a look, might help identify if it is mine e.g. if the radiator grille surround is white (looks like it might be).
Cheers
Mike

[038tipo]

Hi.
All I can add is that in 2011 I was offered the car by Ian Fraser but we could not agree on price so it stayed there, but I think he sold it to a local rally driver who used it in local events. It certainly did not go like a standard HF4WD!
I know only 4 white press cars came here, all the other imported cars were red, and the total number was 80.
Of that number over half were converted to RHD, and gardly any remain today.
It has become the rarest version.
Paul

[frankxhv773t]

I looked at a white one on a mobile home park in Markyate in the early 90's. It was being sold as a non runner by the ne'er-do-well son of a teacher at my children's school. It had over size wheels fitted, inner arched crudely relieved with a lump hammer and it looked like a rabid ferret had been let loose on the wiring under the centre console.

I walked away but have often wondered what happened to it, probably scrapped in the end.

[theoldsmithy]

Hi.
All I can add is that in 2011 I was offered the car by Ian Fraser but we could not agree on price so it stayed there, but I think he sold it to a local rally driver who used it in local events. It certainly did not go like a standard HF4WD!
I know only 4 white press cars came here, all the other imported cars were red, and the total number was 80.
Of that number over half were converted to RHD, and hardly any remain today.
It has become the rarest version.
Paul

Hi Paul
Yes indeed, the local was me!  Unfortunately to compete in it again we had to install a 34mm turbo restrictor to comply, in place of the 1990s spec 36mm.  Plus it was running very lean on full boost so in the interests of reliability we backed it off a bit, so she doesn't go quite as well today :-(

[038tipo]

Hi, good news..
I remember it did go particularly well when I went out on road test with Ian's son!
Glad you are capaigning it still.
Cheers.
Paul

[theoldsmithy]

Following the 1DRY & 2DRY photo before, is this it now as 1 DRY (with added spotlights)?
Does kind of suggest the plates were for display.