Ralph Gilles's Lancia Delta Integrale Is up for Auction on Bring a Trailer

• This special Lancia is nearly the last of a rallying breed.

• With a turbocharged four-cylinder engine, this is Italy's answer to the likes of the Subaru WRX.

• This one has been carefully reworked by none other than Stellantis design chief Ralph Gilles, whose passions clearly run deeper than the V-8 muscle cars with which he's most associated.

It's no secret that the chief designer at Stellantis, Ralph Gilles, is a fan of Detroit muscle. He designed the Chrysler 300C, was head of the SRT performance and motorsport division, and is also known to track a Viper ACR and cruise the streets in a 1000-hp Hellephant-powered 1968 Dodge Charger. But Gilles's passion for speed extends far past big, brash Dodges.

This 1990 Lancia Delta Integrale, up for auction on Bring a Trailer (which, like Car and Driver, is part of Hearst Autos), is a dose of turbocharged rallying madness from a Stellantis sub-brand that's nearly forgotten. It's the box-flared, all-wheel-drive Italian counterpart to the Subaru STI or the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo. This ornery little shoebox is fierce, grippy, and built to tear up any back road, and its previous ownership by Gilles shows that he's a true car enthusiast.

The Delta started out as a pretty ordinary compact family hatchback, with squared-off styling by Giorgetto Giugiaro. As Subaru and Mitsubishi later did, Lancia transformed the Delta into a rally-bred performance machine by adding boost and all-wheel-drive grip for the Integrale model. The result was incredibly successful and included six WRC constructors' championship victories in a row, picking up where the mighty Stratos and 037 had left off.

This 1992 example is a Delta Integrale Evoluzione, and it is technically the final year of the homologation rally cars, as Lancia stopped rally development after its 1992 WRC win. Under the hood is a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine that was good for just shy of 210 horsepower in factory trim, but has been upgraded with a rebuild featuring new camshafts, a reprogrammed ECU, and a high-flow exhaust.