Laust Pedersen

As a counterpoint to this thread and addition to the recent talk about superchargers, I thought it would be worthwhile having something to look up to, namely a Lancia Delta S4; in this case doing hill-climb on dry pavement.

Here is an “X-ray image”.

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about it. 550 bhp from a 1.8L engine ain’t bad and 0-60 in 2.5 sec is almost scary. I read elsewhere that they occasionally reached 2.2 bar boost.

Here is your basic street model. That’s right it is both turbo- and super-charged. The supercharger takes care of the low-end while the turbocharger takes care of the high-end.
They certainly cannot have consulted any design houses (such as Pininfarina, Bertone, Italdesign, etc.), since even I have to admit that it is as charming as a shoebox on wheels.

There also are driving skills to look up to, so here is some advanced ballet, eh, I mean Gruppe B rally.

Then some “street dancing” (unfortunately accompanied by annoying background music).

The really scary stuff, a clip of Henri Toivonen’s skills.

And lastly, here is how a few other S4’s “spend their lives” these days (first and last 20% of clip).

Laust

KuHL 951

I love the sound of the SC and turbo when the blowoffs are fighting for attention. Either he is one superb driver or that car is sponsored by Elmers glue. And yes it is ugly as hell. Thanks for the post.

flashgordon

Thanks for some great videos! Banning the class was a sad thing to see happen, but I guess too many drivers were getting hurt. The cars were stupid fast and really were too much to be safe. I also love the sounds of the anti-lag keeping the turbos spooled off throttle.

mavfan

awesome car and awesome vids... i'm in awe

Clown Pedro

Great links, i love the group B rally cars. By the way what does this have to do with towing a car and crashing it?

bleucamaro

I don't recall the source, but I remember reading an article about some guy who was restoring one of those and he found some interesting plumbing on the engine that looked somewhat like a parallel fuel system, then when he had it down to the bare chassis, he found a bung welded to the cage with something like a Schroeder valve on it. The car had nitrous hidden in the cage. . . and they still couldn’t keep up with the Audi’s.

Clown Pedro

He got a group B rally car, not a homolgation car that ahd been tinkered around with? If so thats funny, are their any more power adders possible; rockets maybe?

evil 944t

From what I heard, They used to add fuel to the turbo between shifts to keep it spooled.

The valve on the roll cage was probably a way to purge the tubing while welding and or pressure testing the welds? I'm not sure nitrous in a rally cage would be a great idea, they do crash a lot...boom....Although drag guys used to do that all the time.

Laust Pedersen

As mentioned, this is a counterpoint to (creating balance for) the 3 videos in the other thread, which essentially showed people unable to handle their cars properly.
Contrary to the other thread I certainly get inspired both technologically and with respect to driving skills, when looking at the references posted here.