It’s nearly time to turn off your work computer, and your overworked brain, for a few dozen delightful hours of you-time known colloquially as the weekend. In anticipation of ending your capitalistic toils to enjoy an ever fleeting sense of leisure, click the play button and slather the folds of your brain in a thick salve of Lancia Delta S4 Gruppe B. The symphonic pleasure of turbocharger, supercharger, tire whine, and exhaust staccato are here to ease you into the all-too-short next-phase of your week. Drop what you’re doing and watch this for ten minutes of pure bliss. You deserve it.
The Delta S4, sometimes referred to by its Abarth project code SE038, was a magnificent competition machine. Martini Racing Lancia introduced the car at the tail end of the Group B regulations, and the car instantly won the final round of the 1985 World Rally Championship.
The 1986 WRC championship victory could have gone Lancia’s way after taking four victories, but the results of the Sanremo round (which Lancia won in a 1-2-3 finish) were nullified that year. There’s a lot to the story, but Italian officials disqualified the Peugeot runners for “illegal aero skirts” which were later found to be perfectly legal, but the Italians were homers for Lancia. Scrapping that rally altogether handed the final Group B championship win to Peugeot’s Juha Kankkunen.
Don’t worry about any of that right now, though. Right now is the time to put this YouTube video in full-screen view, crank up the sound on your noise-cancelling headphones, and watch a bunch of hooligans drive some historically hooligan Italian cars. Zone out for a few minutes. You’re worth it.