So it does exist. It really does. It moves, pops, bangs and skids. And it looks like a rally car. Admittedly, a rally car on small wheels, but a rally car – and possibly even a World Rally Car. Hyundai has arrived. Again.
In October, chairman Chung's son stood up and committed South Korea's biggest carmaker to a World Rally Championship return. Since then, however, in the following two months, there's been absolute silence. Nothing. Nada. So quiet in fact, that the folk over the border in Pyongyang have looked positive chatty by comparison.
And then this: would I like to come to Frankfurt for a ride in the car?
Of course I would.
Even as I boarded the plane, I still had no real idea of what was coming, what was waiting, or what I'd be told.
All would be revealed about half an hour outside the city. In the snow. We were at one of ADAC's driving centres, essentially a German equivalent of MIRA or Millbrook. After an introduction, there was movement outside. And there it was… moving.
The i20 WRC. Hyundai's first World Rally Car since the Accent WRC made a quarrelsome exit from the sport nine years ago.
The introduction to the day had come from Hyundai Motor Europe's communications guru Stefan Henrich. One of the things he was keen to underline is the lack of contact with drivers. In fact, the lack of significant contact with anybody involved in the sport.
So, today, our driver would be a Hyundai test driver from the plant in Korea. He was, in Stefan's unflinchingly honest words, a nameless fellow from a pool of around 50 potential testers.
Helmeted up, I met the man with no name. A balaclava covering everything but his eyes only added to the sense of mystery. Nameless he might have been, voiceless he was not.
"You have good time!" he shouted, with both thumbs in the air.
Despite the white nomex covering most of his face, his eyes shone. He was going to have a good time. He was living the dream. In fairness, I half expected to wake up myself any moment now.
We'd been warned not to try and take any pictures of the interior of the car, which made me all the more intrigued as to what was going on in there. Climbing into the i20 WRC was much the same as most other World Rally Cars. There was nothing out of the ordinary, except for the fact that it needs to slim down – there are more electronic displays than current WRC vogue.
Certainly, the inside looked the part. My only gripe, in fact, is that from the width of the seat I was trying to squeeze into, Koreans don't share my passion for pies.
The belts were done, although they were almost entirely superfluous… having got into the seat it would have taken some pretty significant g-forces to get me out.
And anyway, with the snow still lying on this miserable and deeply chilly December morning, there wouldn't be much in the way of face-shaping gravitational pull.
Very quickly it became clear that what I was sitting in was a test car and nothing more. The was no viscous acceleration, nothing like the pin-point turn-in that fully loaded differentials would have offered and the brakes really weren't too handy either.
I was confused. What was the point of this exercise?
Even more confusing, lovely bloke as I'm sure my nameless friend was, he really wasn't showing the car in the best light at all. Admittedly, we were racing through a stage of traffic cones, but half of the time I'm really not sure he had any idea where we were going and the other half of the time I'm certain he didn't know what gear we were in. Furthermore, on at least one occasion, he pulled us from second to third gear instead of getting the handbrake.
But the enthusiasm was massive.
When I got out of the car, I was nonplussed and genuinely wondering what on earth was going on. Getting out of the car, it began to make sense.
Everything began to make sense.
Assembled alongside the makeshift service area, a group of Koreans looked on proudly as their car slipped its way around the stage. Every time it came back, they cleaned it rigorously and listened intently to what anybody said about the car.
When the one with no name spun, he was treated like an all-conquering hero when he stepped unscathed from the machine. The pride in their work was immense.
I got it. This really, really was the start of something.
This was it. This was the i20 WRC in its rawest form.
Hyundai hadn't brought me to Germany to give me an engineering story that would rock the WRC to its very core, I was here to see exactly this enthusiasm. And the associated intent.
The car, quite simply, didn't matter. My friend could have given me a run down the road in a wheelbarrow, as far as I was concerned. I now understood.
Hyundai's commitment to next year's World Rally Championship is absolute.
There will be those quick to scoff at the company's attempts at going from zero to a full WRC programme in 12 months, but that's absolutely the intention.
Looking at the most recent projects, Prodrive spent pretty much a year developing a generic car before spending a similar amount of time bolting that technology into a Mini Countryman. Volkswagen is just ending a development programme that has, realistically, gone on for almost the same amount of time with the Polo R WRC.
So, can Hyundai halve the development time? Why not? A few years ago, nobody would have thought it possible for a single car plant to churn our 1.6 million motors a year, yet the company's Ulsan facility does. Making a handful of more bespoke Hyundai's shouldn't be a problem from its new facility in Frankfurt.
Budget-wise, you do the maths. Hyundai sells more than four million cars a year; money shouldn't be a problem.
It's not going to be easy though. Hyundai is talking about installing a team principal in January, with the rest of the team in place soon after. For the car to stand any chance in 2014, it will need to be testing soon into the second half of the season and that's a very big ask.
Despite ranking higher than Ford in terms of vehicles produced, plenty of folk still have little clue about Hyundai; doubtless plenty think it's just the company that sponsors the World Cup.
And that's why Hyundai's coming to the World Rally Championship: to wake the world up to what it's got to offer.
The Korean-built i20 WRC has got the firm's world championship effort to the startline. But from the ground up, there's a whole new race waiting to be run. And possibly even won.
(David Evans)
