Maturo Competition Cars is a Dutch company founded by amateur rally driver Marco Geeratz and his former technician (and the man who sold him his rally cars) Frank van Ganzewinkel. If you’ve seen Geeratz’s name mentioned before, but not in the car spheres, it may have been ‘at the hairdresser’ – he is Chantal Janzen’s husband.
Maturo has been building and maintaining all kinds of classic rally cars for a while now, but the focus has now shifted to Delta Integrales. Yes: if you want an angular, four-wheel drive Italian hatchback that goes like the fire brigade and makes the complete range of turbo sounds known on earth, you have to be in the Netherlands these days.
The Dutch Lancia Deltas
Maturo has three roads leading to Delta ownership. There is the Classic (basically a restored and slightly improved Delta HF Integrale Evo or Evo II), the Rally (a Delta built entirely according to Group A regulations with sympathetically upgraded parts for greater safety, reliability and performance) and finally aforementioned Stradale.
Only ten of the Stradale will be built, following the recipe of a base consisting of Maturo’s modernized Group A rally car, which is then wrapped in an all-carbon fiber body to look like a cleaner, meaner Evo. “We changed the rally car as little as possible to make the Stradale usable as an everyday car,” says Geeratz.
Maturo about building the new Lancia Delta
“It’s a very manual car. There’s no help – there’s no traction control, not even ABS. The background of our company is very technical, and we know the rally car inside out. We raced it, we broke it and then we improved it where necessary.
“We started by buying an original Group A car – the car in which Kankkunen won the Olympus Rally – and redesigned all of the original Abarth parts. This is because those parts are either unreasonably expensive, or are now worn out and unreliable. For example: the gearbox housing always breaks down at some point.’
‘You could see that in all the original parts, because they were always welded. So without changing the external design, we know how to significantly strengthen some points. In the past two years we have developed, improved or re-developed at least 2,000 parts.’
The rally Delta for the road
So this is not a case of ‘take an engine out of a crate, throw it in a car and mash it with a nicer interior’; it is a true rally-spec Delta HF Integrale with license plates. The engine is the original 2.0-litre four-cylinder with double overhead camshafts, completely rebuilt with a revised intake tract, new camshafts, lighter valves, a new cylinder head and forged pistons.
And then there’s the turbo that typifies the whole car’s approach – living comfortably in its original Garrett T3 cottage while being brand new internally, spooling up quicker and reducing lag.
Specifications of the Lancia Delta from Maturo
The result is nearly 400 horsepower sent to all four wheels via a rebuilt five-speed manual and upgraded differentials. The brakes are FIA homologated, the suspension is equipped with 4-way adjustable dampers and there is a hydraulic handbrake to humiliate the necessary hairpin bends in a Kankkunen-like way.
Maturo hopes to be ready soon with the prototype you see on these pages. One of the first destinations is the Juha ramp, because who better to endorse the way a dream Delta drives?
I’m sure it will also help that Juha, despite his wealth of experience and illustrious competition career with the brand, is not emotionally strongly attached to Lancia; as some of us can be. When asked if he was disappointed when the brand decided to leave the rally world behind in 1992, he says: ‘No. Not really. That was their decision.’ He just went back to Toyota the following season and immediately won another title. That’s how you do that…
Lancia Delta Classic
Price: 145,000+ euros
At Maturo it all starts with an original Evo or Evo II, of which all known problem parts are replaced. In addition, it gets a little more power (230 hp) so that it drives the way you always thought it drove. More restoration is also possible, for more money, just like more power (290 or 340 hp).
Lancia Delta Rally
Price: 240,000 euros – 290,000 euros
The closest thing to Maturo’s original expertise is building Group A-spec Delta rally cars for people who want the old-school look with modernized performance and reliability. With the standard Brembos and a non-customized gearbox you are 240k further, but (much) more is also possible…
Lancia Delta Stradale
Price: 365,000+ euros
Only four carbon fiber-bodied Stradales are built each year by Maturo’s ten-man team. Each car is street legal, with a stunning interior and a Group A rally car as the base. Oh, and each copy is individually ‘signed off’ by Mr. Kankkunen himself.
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