There’s something that Miki Biasion, the driver who won back-to-back World Rally Championship titles with Lancia in 1988 and 1989, said at the brand’s launch. new Ypsilon rally car honestly, it gave me goosebumps. “If you dreamed of the track when you were a kid, you dreamed of the red of a Ferrari,” Biasion said in the company release. press release. “However, if you dreamed of becoming a rally driver, then you dreamed of Lancia.”

The man is not wrong, and although Lancia’s rallying heritage from the 1960s to the early 1990s will be almost impossible to surpass, the brand has finally taken the first step towards reclaiming that glory. The Ypsilon Rally4 HF is officially on sale to customer teams starting today, for the equivalent of $80,416 in euros.

Its bill is modest: a 1.2-liter turbocharged three-cylinder engine sending 212 horsepower to the front wheels via a five-speed gearbox and a limited-slip differential. But the Rally4 class in which the Ypsilon is built to compete is a springboard for future stars, featuring competition in vehicles much closer to stock machines than high-downforce, high-speed rally cars. silhouette that defines the top category of the WRC.

Lancia will field the Ypsilon in the factory European Rally Championship from 2026. Before that, it will compete in the Italian Rally Championship, where Lancia will stage its own competition on six of the upcoming season’s rallies. The winner will be rewarded with a seat on the ERC team the following year.

So no, this humble hatch is not yet fighting for the place of the Delta, even less for that of the 037 Or Stratos. But it’s a start, and as I was one of those kids who actually dreamed of Lancia while others were more concerned with Ferrari, seeing one of the brand’s current models tearing up an asphalt stage can’t help but to make me smile.

Some will argue that the Ypsilon is a glorified Peugeot 208 – a known quantity on the rally scene – and point out that its spicier production counterpart is fully electric and overweight, much like the Jeep it shares a platform with. I won’t disagree with any of this, but listen: if you’ve followed Lancia for any length of time, you know that things were really bleak for about twenty years there. The company was surprisingly quick to abandon its high-performance image to court high fashion and personal luxury, before being briefly and unconvincingly recast as the European Chryslerthen reduced its entire range to a single car, an overly expensive car Fiat500.

I would certainly favor this timeline, where Miki Biasion advises the development of Lancia’s road and racing cars, rather than these. If the brand wants to reform its entire identity around what it achieved over 30 years ago, I’m all for seeing how it intends to pay homage to that history and maybe even write some new ones pages in the book.

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