Our Cars: 1988 Lancia Delta Integrale 8V
18 July 2013: Lancia Delta heads for Perfection
I must admit that I'm not a newcomer to the benefits of proper car detailing. It's been 10 years since I had a Rover Vitesse professionally cleaned, polished and beautified, and from that moment, I came to appreciate the huge gulf there is between cleaning a car yourself on a sunday morning with the usual off-the-shelf stuff, and someone who really knows what they're doing with all the right products.
Because once your car's been properly detailed, you'll never look at it in the same way again. Thanks to the wonders of Twitter, I got to know Richard Tipper, who goes by the name of @perfectionvalet - which is odd, as his company's called Perfection Detailing. Anyway, think of the best cars in the world - and he's detailed them. Ferrari 250GTO? Certainly, Sir... Bugatti EB110? But of course.
So, given this track record, he was the perfect man to show us how to make my average looking Lancia Delta Integrale transform into something amazingly special.
It was a day-long exercise getting the Lancia looking ship-shape, and far more thorough a process than I'd originally anticipated. Mainly because as well as making the paint work gleam, Richard pretty much stripped the interior in order to removed the grime. But, blimey, what a difference it made! The Lancia looks twice the car it did, and ready for the show season, where it can happily rub shoulders with Lamborghinis and Ferraris.
To see the whole process, take a look at our Thirty Steps to Perfection gallery.
« Earlier: It's MoT time! Later: Lancia goes on a Grand Rendezvous »
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