Charade DeTomaso 926R Was The Supercar Of Daihatsu
Almost everyone buys the Anda charade for their B16 or 4EFTE endeavors and square eyed Daihatsu Charade and its later facelift model remains in vain with little or no gratitude of how much a beast of a car it was. Folks down here have gone wild with the Anda Charade so much that it has raised Anda’s price a little bit owing to the swaps guys do to make it a pocket rocket for the straight lines. But Daihatsu was crazy and passionate too but they weren’t aiming for straight lines, they wanted fast cornering abilities for the terrain which gave birth to the famous quote, ‘Motorsports is dangerous’, the Group B rally.
After acquiring Innocenti from Leyland, DeTomaso continued the production of Innocenti’s hot hatch; Innocenti Mini which became known as Innocenti DeTomaso which was updated with bigger engine and plastic bumpers. In 1982 DeTomaso started to look around for a new engine supplier due to the supply crisis with Leyland and eventually swapped its Mini engine and chassis with G11 Daihatsu Charade chassis and engine which included the CB60 SOHC 3 Cyl. turbo engine. Together by combing Japanese engineering with Italian hot hatch style gave Innocenti Turbo DeTomaso.
That’s how Daiha
It was the regarded as Daihatsu’s very own supercar and journalist started to drew similarities between the Renault 5 but 926R’s fate remained unknown to Daihatsu as it moved toward selling it via various media presentations and test drive which all came out positive, great expectations were with the 926R owing to how much successful its predecessor was in WRC but it all went in vain when FIA decided to ban group B rally later the year after the fatalities that struck in early 1986, hence the 926R’s production run was cancelled and It could never see the show room.
There were a lot of 926 turbo’s and the 926 DeTomaso Turbos imported into Pakistan, but today, in Pakistan, sadly Anda Charade has the better image when it comes to sports or say straight line racing. Had they known what gave the Charade the hype it has today, I am quite sure few madmen would’ve performed the ultimate conversion down here; converting the 926 DeTomaso Turbo into a 926R, the addition or deletion of the single letter R is the biggest difference you’d ever see.