Advert Encourages You To Part-Ex Your Lancia Delta Integrale For A Suzuki Baleno

A Suzuki dealer in Ghana has launched an ad campaign encouraging people to trade in their old cars for something newer and more modern. Ordinarily, this would be of precisely no interest to us, but the way it’s gone about advertising the part-exchange programme is… interesting.

The ads come from CFAO, the official Ghanaian distributors for Suzuki, Mitsubishi and Mercedes-Benz, and the premise is very simple: take the back of an old car, and combine it with the front of a new one to create the image of one single car. Indeed, head to CFAO’s website, and you’ll see they’ve done this with what looks like an old Ford Ranger and a new-ish Mitsubishi L200.

However, another ad along the same lines raises a few questions. As posted on Reddit and picked up by CarScoops, the car at the front is a Suzuki Baleno, a forgettable supermini that was sold in the UK for a few years. The car at the rear? A Lancia Delta Integrale. Y’know, the iconic 1990s rallying homologation special that’s now one of the most sought-after performance cars of its era.

Not only that but the presence of an aluminium fuel filler cap (albeit on the wrong side, suggesting the image is flipped) and larger Speedline Corse alloys give away that this is an Integrale Evo 2, the single most in-demand example of the breed. The sheer hype around these cars means you’ll struggle to pay less than £75,000 for one today, with plenty well into six figures or with their prices listed as ‘POA’.

Needless to say, you could probably get five or six Balenos by trading one in. There are two possible answers to what’s happened here. Most likely is that the person that created the ad isn’t necessarily a car person, and didn’t realise the significance of the Delta. After all, to those of us who aren’t car bores, the Integrale just looks like any old 1990s hatchback.

The other option is that CFAO is massively trolling us, just as we thought that Australian Nissan dealer might have been a couple of years ago when it suggested that someone had straight-up swapped their R34 GT-R for a Leaf. If so, then bravo: it’s a solid marketing ploy.