A techno-marvel in sensible shoes
I’ve only ever owned one four-wheeldrive car. It was a Lancia Delta Integrale 16V – bought when they still had a bit of almost-new rally god kudos, sold in the midst of that bonkers period when you could barely give them away – so I started pretty much at the top.
But in many ways the Integrale was also the bottom. For every memory of mind-boggling on-the-road magic and maximum cool points wherever it was parked – except from my then-girlfriend, who insisted on referring to it as ‘the Nova’, because she was an idiot – there was one of equal agony.
No fuel gauge in any car I have ever owned (even the Interceptor!) has sprinted from full to empty as quickly, even making allowance for some very spirited driving. Then there was the fact that the screen started rotting out almost instantly, plus the cleverest, most Integrale breakdown of all, which was when the piece of fuel line inside the fuel tank split, meaning perfect idling, but zero go and no visible symptoms whatsoever of the malady. The car just gracefully recycled its fuel within the tank while sounding great and going nowhere.
Thankfully, guru Pete Ward had seen the problem so many times that he diagnosed it over the phone, and then turned up at my London flat to oversee operations by driving the only S4 Stradale in the UK around the South Circular. What a dude.
I adored that car – if only it wasn’t quite so… Italian. If only someone had thought to make a more functional, less emotional car of that ilk, I used to think.
Chatting with a frankly effervescent Glen Waddington on his return from the Alps, he described the Quattro as having all the drama and none of the drama. That’s how I remember Quattros from driving them more than a decade ago; and that quality was something I scorned then, while now it is something I relish. Funny old world.