KEEPING
DELTAS
DRIVING
Lancia Delta Integrale specialists and enthusiasts
This handsome 16v has been hidden away for too long,
the time has come for it to show off a bit!
No need to be COY!
Good friend of our site John, has a long relationship with the Japanese car auction business.
Many years ago John's good friend set up a car import business in Japan, with three colleagues
the business grew and is long established in the international car trade.
In October 2020 John was trawling their Japanese auction website and saw a poorly photographed
Delta 16v which caught his eye. To cut a long story short, John made his bids and won the auction.
Checking, shipping, customs clearance and delivery took 8 weeks before the 16v
was in the UK with John.
The words 'Japanese tuning shop' can only mean one thing, modificato!
John's 16v has indeed been modified, the engine bay shot shows a few different
items, but the changes have been well executed and COY runs fine.
During the waiting time John contacted Centro Storico Fiat to get the original build spec and option list from the production records. The car left the factory painted black,
with black leather seats and interior.
John's research found that the last owner in Japan was a tuning shop, specialising in Italian sports cars, and the popular Integrale. John's Delta was used as a test bed and demonstrator for the tuning shop. The tuner and 6th owner purchased the car in 2002, he owned it for 8 years until the Japan tax office seized the car for non payment of taxes.
The owner paid up in 2012 and the car was returned to him.
The car was then stored hidden away for 8 years until John won the purchase auction.
The car landed in UK on Christmas Eve and was cleared by customs in the new year.
John had the car delivered to a garage well known by him, where his new Delta had a full belt service, bushes, steering joints and battery replaced, and a MOT.
UK registration and new number plates were a long time coming, we were in the depths of Covid at that time, but by May the car was legal and John set about enjoying it.
Although G136COY is now a resident of Yorkshire, it was exported new to Japan.
In Japan the original black bodywork was eventually repainted in a Maserati blue metallic finish, the lovely front black leather seats had been replaced with black cloth JDM Recaros
having a blue cloth centre. The car has a composite hood and gold Speedline wheels.
COY also has after market suspension and engine air filter, and a stainless single
exit pipe exhaust system.
John noted the car has the usual sort of Japanese engine mods, an HKS boost controller,
a special dump valve and a rev limiter, but he suspects there are a good few updates and alterations he can't see. With the air con that engine bay is cosy!
The dash and door tops have been given a soft fabric finish of some kind, and the inside door panels are a gloss black composite. All mods have been completed to a high standard, and John will give it a good going over.
Interior shot shows the soft touch dashboard and the JDM seat replacements, a lovely seat though!
I asked John if he knew where the shed was in Japan where all the original Delta front seats go,
if a person could discover that, he'd be popular!
John ordered a handsome pair of Sparco front seats from Italy. As mentioned below these didn't fit properly.
John is modest, but it was a really difficult job to adapt the seat rails. There was a car show deadline to meet,
and the seats were miles away from fitting.
John had nothing he could refer to, so it might have been the JDM seats were mounted differently, or the Sparcos were wrong, but it was a major fabrication problem.
They were fitted safely in time for the show.
Bringing us up to date, John is enjoying his Delta, pushing it a bit on the sports suspension and adapting to the turbo lag and big boost.
John ordered a lovely pair of Sparco R100 Lancia Racing liveried black leather front seats, these were ordered from Italy, and surprise, surprise they didn't fit. The mountings wouldn't fit COY's original seat frames, John had a difficult job making adaptor plates to get the seats into place, but he got them in and they look the biz!
John checked COY into the paintshop for a season ending tidy up, the painter located the correct shade of Maserati blue. He fettled up a few rusty spots and gave the car a lovely base coat and clear lacquer finish.
It gleams now and shows the off 16v's crisp styling perfectly.
With COY's bodywork tidied up and repainted in the attractive Maserati blue, the car certainly looks beautiful. John fitted COY with a Mikki Biassion replica decal set, which is nicely modest and enhances the car very well.
COY is a lovely Delta with an interesting history, it's a great looking car which is going to be loved and well cared for by it's new UK owner.
Now that's Winter storage!
COY spent the cold months in John's friend's Maserati showroom window,
the handsome Delta looks born for the showroom.
Certainly not coy any more!
We thank John for sharing his Delta with us, we'll keep in touch with it's progress.
