Would you shift up a gear, or hit the brakes and hook reverse?
Last night I introduced my teenage daughter to the 1985 sci-fi classic Back To The Future. Now it is 05h00 and I am experiencing a cerebral tug of war: I have a one-way time machine but cannot decide how to use it. Do I go forward in time, or back?
It is a decision that, thirty years ago, would have taken me a nanosecond to make. Woohoo! Take me to 2020, baby. You see, I have always considered myself a futurist – a flying cars and elevated mag-lev monorails between impossibly shiny skyscrapers kind of guy.
But right now, I am a disillusioned middle-ager asking, “Where is the future we were promised?” Also, “Why the heck does a Lancia Delta HF Integrale suddenly look so damn fine?”
How did I get here? Recently, I began a series of digital illustrations of influential concept cars from the late 1980s and early ’90s. The quad-turbo Ford GT90 and jet fighter-canopied Peugeot Proxima and Renault Laguna – topped the list.
These were not just vehicles designed to ferry teased-hair humans in dayglo legwarmers to the gym, they were wildly varied spaceships, veritable time
machines teleporting you to a future of striking aesthetics, stirring performance and driving joy.
Anyway, I got thinking about cookie-cutter corporately correct cars and chronically congested roads of today. It does not matter how efficient, refined, and connected modern cars are when driving them is so dull. Inching through oceans of soulless lookalike crossovers is leagues short of motoring nirvana.
So, take me back to 1988 instead, when the tarmac was less tortured, everything was more analogue, and Lancia had just released the HF Integrale. Why the Delta? Well, some experiences live larger than others.
Back in 2009, I was in Italy covering the Mille Miglia in an Alfa press car. While on yet another coffee break in the hills just North of Florence, an agreeable Integrale owner delivered a first taste of the pocket rocket of Lancia.
It is hard to forget the thud in the back as the Garrett turbocharger hit peak effort, the unrelenting traction, the immediacy of its reactions, and how the relative dearth of mechanical refinement (and my properly caffeinated bloodstream) amplified the sense of speed.
It was an indelible espresso- and benzina-experience that turned out to be the best eight kilometre road trip ever. Like that famous two-word verse in the Bible, it was short but had all the feels.
I am not alone in suffering rushes of nostalgia. Singer Vehicle Design, restorer of classic air-cooled Porsches, recently unveiled the DLS. With less weight, more power, and better dynamics, this carbon bodied, completely re-engineered ‘old’ 911 is, to many, more desirable than a new one.
Also blowing up the Internet is the similarly reimagined Delta Integrale Futurista by Automobili Amos. Just why does this new/old car resonate with so many? Founder, Eugene Amos, says it best: “This car represents my romantic vision in a world that is too aseptic, too fast, that runs like the wind, superficial and intangible.
“I long for a bygone, idealized time when men, values and substance were at the core of the product. Therefore this car is pure, analogic, raw, and essential”. Also, it looks sensational.
Sometimes the best way forward is back.
– Wayne Batty
