Hyundai planning performance arm

Hyundai will use its upcoming World Rally Championship assault to add credibility and attract youth to its planned go-faster division.

Sources in Korea have confirmed that the hot Hyundai division could be launched as early as 2015, though 2016 is more likely, and will concentrate initially on the next-generation i20 and Veloster.

The Korean industrial powerhouse has already spent more than tens of millions of Euros on its open-ended WRC program primarily to give credibility to its as-yet unnamed hot Hyundai branch.

“We are already starting in the direction of a fast road division,” Hyundai Motorsport Team Principal Michel Nandan confirmed during a recent WRC test in Spain.

“The idea of Hyundai was to connect the experience, engineering-wise, of the sport program with high-performance concepts.”

While slotting the Veloster SR’s turbocharged four-cylinder engine inside the next i20 would seem an obvious place to start a go-fast division, it will need to wait until the all-new car emerges in 2015.

Even at the WRC level, Hyundai Motorsport will only run its new i20 WRCar for its introductory 2014 season before switching to the all-new model in 2015.

“This effort to go back to rallying makes more sense if there is a road-car program,” Mr Nandan said. “I couldn’t say when that would be, but it’s being worked on.”

The close ties between the rally program and the road-car program could even see some of the work on the road cars being done in Hyundai Motorsport’s enormous new headquarters in Alzenau, near Frankfurt in Germany, and the development split between Hyundai’s new Nürburgring test centre and Korea.

There’s certainly space for a warm-to-hot road-car division at the Hyundai Motorsports facility. The team rents the smallest middle portion of a single former factory, but that still gives it 2125 square-metres of office space and 5878 square-metres of workshop space.

Pointedly, during our visit, Hyundai Motorsports Team Manager Alain Penasse showed us the cavernous empty space, estimated at around 15,000 square-metres, at one end of the building that could almost triple the size of Hyundai Motorsport.

“Korea likes that the spectators can get close to the cars and the drivers, but you go to a track and they’re already removed from it,” Penasse said.

“Strong performance in WRC makes sales of road cars better and it attracts younger people to the brand.

“Hyundai wants to make the brand younger and more dynamic and that’s what rallying does.”

Tied in to any uprated road-car program will be another jewel in the hot Hyundai crown, with a customer rallying program and even help for Germany’s VLN endurance racers.

“It’s clear we are talking about a customer program because there is demand for it,” Penasse said.

“It would not be immediately, because in 2014 we are busy with the first car and the designers are already starting the design for the 2015 car.

“Having a customer program means more complication. A third car may be a possibility for 2014 and if we see a possibility or opportunity, we will consider it.”

Customer rally programs have proven to be big business for the Ford-connected M Sport, owned by Malcolm Wilson, whose various class contenders provided more than half the entire field at some rounds of the WRC this year.

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