The revival of certain brands within the Stellantis empire may be more difficult than others. If the future of a brand like Jeep (or even Ram) is almost assured, it’s not as simple for a manufacturer like Lancia, which currently has only one model, the Ypsilon, which is actually based on a Fiat 500 skeleton. We’re a long way from the brand’s glorious past, you’ll agree!
But it’s precisely by looking back to this more joyful era of the brand that senior management wants to give back its letters of nobility to a division that really needs it with the return of the Lancia Delta.
Lancia’s new CEO, Luca Napolitano, made the announcement in an interview with the Milanese daily Corriere della Serra. The model would be purely electric and its arrival would be planned for 2026. For now, it would be very surprising if the car giant would allow a return to North America for this Italian brand, but well, you never know.
And the man in charge was reassuring about the nature of this 21st century Delta. According to Lancia’s CEO, the new Delta will be an exciting car, a manifesto of progress and technology.
It remains to be seen whether Lancia intends to offer two versions of the new Delta. Will the mythical Delta Integrale make a comeback on Italian roads? It’s safe to assume so, especially with the flexibility offered by an electric platform. A four-wheel drive version (with one engine per axle) seems quite feasible, but we’ll have to wait a few more years for the technical details.
The Italian daily newspaper said that the future Delta would be able to run on solid state batteries with a possible range of over 700 km (435 miles), which is quite a distance these days.
In the meantime, Lancia intends to relaunch the Ypsilon in 2024, the city car that would supposedly be the last Lancia in history with an internal combustion engine under the hood.
