1991 Lancia Delta LX 1.3 double barrel weber

Summary:

A nice car, cheap to get now, expensive to repair, and not such a high performance machine

Faults:

Water gets inside the car when washed or rains due to faulty sunroof sealing.

A few electrical glitches, like side repeaters controls working sporadicly, a new part solved the problem.

Power lock sometimes only locks driver's door.

Handbrake doesn't work (never did).

Steering gets unbalanced frequently.

Nothing else, really.

General Comments:

An overall nice car, although don't want to maintain it for long, parts are expensive and dealers take forever to get you the parts you need (once the car had to stay parked for about 6 weeks waiting for a windshield).

Does not corrode easily, contrary to what people might think.

Engine is smooth, but has serious addiction to petrol (11 L/100 Km)

Engine performance sucks. A few days ago I was undertaken by a Citroen ax 1.1, and my foot was on the floor!! Just not acceptable.

Stock suspension sucks, which makes handling not so good.

Brakes heat up and loose power fast.

Running costs are really high if you need to get new origin parts, parts are inadequately expensive.

The gearbox is well built and smooth to make shifts, but the gear ratio is all wrong (when shifting from 2nd to 3rd, a huge loss of power is felt)

Hope the 1.6 is better than this one...

Would you buy another car from this manufacturer? No

Review Date: 28th June, 2004

29th Jun 2004, 01:01

You got beaten by an AX 11? Normal, this car had about 60 hp for 650 kg- I used to drive one and the car lightness was very apparent even if the downside was an iffy built quality.

The Delta was a really nice and technically advanced car when it was launched (~1979) but by the end (~1992) it was simply dated. However the fact that it lasted so long does really testify on the success of the design.