We have been supplying a few parts for Austrian Erhard Sammers 8v for a few months now, I was quite interested to learn about its history when Erhard mentioned it to me so I asked for more information. It has recently been featured in Autorevue magazine and the pictures (apart from the group shot above which is from Steyr-Daimler-Puch) are property of Ace photographer Andreas Riedmann.
A big thanks to Andreas for letting me post up examples of his excellent photography and to Erhard for writing the following story, It is so well written I have simply re-printed it word for word:
Some interesting facts about my Delta Integrale 8V (1988):
The car was imported from Italy in April 1988 by Steyr-Daimler-Puch-Fahrzeugtechnik. This company, which is situated in the city of Graz in Austria and today is a part of Magna International Inc., developed the 4-wheel-drive-system for the integrale. (On some Rally cars you can still see the small supplier-sponsor-sticker with the logo of the company). There it was part of the test-fleet and used for testing a very sophisticated torque-vectoring-4wd-system. Therefore the car was equipped with a Matter-rollcage and loads of sensors and other testing equipment.
Because in 1988 only cars with a catalytic converter could be registered (Austria and Switzerland, you know...) a special permission had to be given by the governor of the county Styria to register the car. No private person would have been able to get that permission, but for Steyr-Daimler-Fahrzeugtechnik it was a case of 'Higher interest for the country'. And so for sure my car is one of very, very few non-cat-Integrales in Austria.
After the car served its duty at Steyr-Fahrzeugtechnik the car was brought back to road-standard in 1995 and sold to someone, who had absolutely no idea how to treat an integrale and ruined the crankshaft bearings. Which was, from todays point of view, some big luck, because the car could not be destroyed by some 'enthusiast'. The next few years the car spent in a barn in the countryside, after it was bought back by a employee of Steyr-Daimler-Puch-Fahrzeugtechnik, who felt sorry for the car and wanted to bring it back to the road. Well, a little later he started building a house..... and ran out of money for the Integrale-project (but he has a very nice house right now).
At that time I first heard about the car and used the opportunity to buy it. Of course the engine was still broken and many parts of the Integrale where stored in boxes, which stood in and around the car in the barn. Well, then my restoration-project started: The engine and the rebuilding of the car was done by a rally-mechanic and Integrale-Specialist, who also worked for Franz Wittmann, a well known rally-driver in Austria. (He won the World-Championship-Rally in New Zealand in 1987 with a Delta HF 4WD). Everything took longer than I thought, but finally the engine and the car where finished and the car celebrated its comeback on the Austrian roads.
But that wasn’t the end of the - already very long - restoration-story. The car was running very well and I enjoyed it very much, when I discovered some small rust-stains on the back side of the roof, just over the hatch. I showed them to an expert – and could not believe, what he told me: The whole roof had to be replaced, because there was so much rust there (covered with some kind of filler and paint, of course) that it could not be repaired. I wasn’t too happy about that. But the funny thing was, that when I called Lancia Austria, they told me, that they have a Delta-roof in stock! After all those years and for a car, which had not been sold very often in Austria. Hmmm, maybe some other owners needed that spare part, too...
To make a long story short the new roof was put on the car and the whole body was redone by a specialist. He put so much effort in the body-repair and painting, that the car now is in a better shape than when it left the factory – as a friend told me, who knows a lot about italian cars ... and the build-quality there.
Otherwise I left the car in original-state, which I prefer. I just applied some rust-protection (Mike Sander’s) and put some Martini Racing-badges and a Martini-Steering wheel on. But in spring the best part will follow: the stainless-steel-waterpipe from deltaparts.co.uk!
Best Greetings!
Erhard
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