Hyundai motorsport chiefs say its World Rally Championship programme will result in warmed-up versions of its road cars being launched.
The Korean firm is joining the WRC next year and is testing the Hyundai i20 machine that will do battle with VW’s Volkswagen Polo, Citroën’s DS3 and Ford’s Ford Focus.
“It is Hyundai’s intention to connect the experience of sport with road cars,” said team principal Michel Nandan. “It’s probably a bit too early to talk about it because we’re still in the early stages of the development of the i20 WRC.”
Team manager Alain Penasse said the WRC programme was aimed at changing the brand image to attract younger buyers. “Whatever performance we get from the WRC car you always sell better,” he said. “You attract attention of younger people and that’s the aim of Hyundai. It knows it has to do something to make the brand younger and more dynamic.”
He added that the rally programme was already having an influence on the firm’s research and development activities: “We have a lot of Korean engineers who are at the WRC base near Frankfurt.
"They work closely with us and there is a very good cooperation with the Yeongnam research and development centre. They started the work on the i20 WRC there before the programme was launched and are heavily involved.”
James Bolton
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The insatiable twins
Kia/Hyundai may be seen by some as relatively small players in the UK and Europe but believe it or not the twins have already become a key global player.
With every new model or concept, I get the feeling that the Korean twins are hot in the pursuit of motoring excellence - led by a very competent Peter Schreyer.
It's still unclear
It's still very unclear how Hyundai and Kia are going to separate the two brands and stop competing against each other - Peter Schreyer, the new joint Chief Designer and joint CEO has said it'll take a full model cycle of 6 years to separate the two brands - the sad thing is that they're only starting now.
oO.
It is a nice looking car indeed.
I love hot hatches.
So many hot hatches, so little time.