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From the earliest age I’ve had a fascination with sports cars, particularly European Supercars. I can vividly remember my matchbox car collection from early childhood, and my favourites amongst them being the Countach, the Testarossa, and a Lancia Stratos in the classic white, red and green Alitalia livery. Throughout my early teens my walls were plastered with posters of the Supercars of the day, and I spent weekends in the garage with my dad pulling apart classic cars and putting them back together. 

Fast forward to my late teens and I found myself at university on the Gold Coast. At the time a couple of small local manufacturers were making low volume sports cars with steel space frames and fibreglass bodies, using donor components from various other cars. One such manufacturer was known as De-Type and I remember being stopped in my tracks upon seeing one of their cars on the roads of the Gold Coast as I drove to university one morning. I swung my car around and followed it for as long as I could to get a better look. Very wide and very low, the car had the styling of the contemporary Supercars of the day but yet was distinctly unique. It was not a direct replica of anything in particular but drew undeniable styling cues from the Lamborghinis of the day. After working out what the car was I subsequently visited the local factory multiple times to watch the cars in production and to dream.

I’m unclear as to the relationship between De-Type and another company called Delanda, but it would seem to me that the moulds for the car that I had seen at some point changed hands to Delanda and were used in a car known as the Delanda GT 5000. Long story short, both companies were short lived and very few De-Types or Delandas found their way onto the road during the period. After both companies ceased production cars changed hands periodically on Ebay and other online forums but as the years passed they popped up less and less until they couldn’t be found at all……until.

Fast Forward another two decades or so and there it was! My teenage dream car for sale on Ebay. A little shabby mind you, but none the less an unfinished De-Type or Delanda (unsure quite which one) and within my price range. Managing to outbid the competition I secured the car, and after a period of storage, I finally had the garage space and time to get my hands on the thing and start work on bringing it back to life. 

Like so many teenage dreams, it would sadly turn out to not be exactly what I hoped!

For a start it appeared to have been left out in the weather for periods of its life, with spots of rust throughout the space frame. Furthermore, one of the previous owners had attempted to turn it into a convertible by cutting the roof off rather crudely through both the fibreglass and space frame roof structure. The door mechanisms didn’t function, the windscreen that came with it didn’t fit, the suspension was primitive, and the engine gearbox combo was relatively anaemic and of uncertain condition internally. 

My initial hopes of being able to restore the car myself began to shatter, but undeterred I simply started looking for the right engineer to bring the car back to life. Meanwhile, I also began the search for a more appropriate drivetrain for the project, ideally something European and with a few more ponies that the supercharged Ford 3.8L V6 that was in the car when I got it. As I was unsure at the time whether I had got my hands on a De-Type or a Delanda, I dubbed the project “Project Delta”.