A LESSON IN MATURITY

Restomodding firm Maturo's take on the Lancia Delta Integrale is a Group A rally car designed for the road and made better. Matt Prior takes it for a spin

- Matt Prior

What I like most about Maturo Competition Cars is where the company came from. Most restomodding W outfits - yes, this is another one set out to make a car look old. To make it go better too, but in doing so, most turn up the classic appeal. This one, though, a Dutch company based near Eindhoven, founded by entrepreneur Marco Geeratz and engineer Frank van Ganzewinkel, has its roots firmly set in motorsport.

Van Ganzewinkel owned a company making Group A Lancia Deltas for classic rallying, including redesigning and making thousands of its own components for greater performance and, crucially, durability than original 1980s World Rally Championship cars. Those were fast, sure, but in the high-cost, highly competitive Group A era of the WRC, they were used, abused and built to be thrown away after just a couple of rallies.

Geeratz bought one of van Ganzewinkel's cars and started competing in it. Only then did the pair begin restoring road cars, and only after doing some of those did they wonder what they could do if they applied their rally experience to a road-going Delta. The Maturo Stradale you see here is the result: like a Group A Delta Integrale but built for the road and made better.

"People see the icon from their youth, and they buy it and they drive it and it's disappointing," says Geeratz. "That's where restomods come in. [We said] 'let's take a Group A rally car and use it as the technical basis for a street car and let's give it an interior that goes with this price tag - the Lancia Delta for street use as it should be."

Which is how I come to be standing in a wet car park in the home counties admiring the Stradale's detailing, alongside Richard Lane, who has brought along his own late 8v Delta Integrale, a model that preceded the even more famous Evo. With us too is Zion Geeratz, Marko's son and Stradale project manager.