Hyundai: Second time lucky?

New thinking, new possibilities.

That was Hyundai's tagline for its road car adverts last year. Those principles will have to be applied in the World Rally Championship if it wants to stand any kind of chance of a better showing than last time, when it returns... when it returns.

Hyundai's announcement in Paris on Thursday morning states simply that it is 'poised' for a comeback, without letting the waiting world know exactly when. Speculation suggests the WRC i20, a car developed by Hyundai's in-house team in Paris, will be running some time next season before a full programme in 2014.

That would be 11 years after the South Koran firm last started a full WRC season. But, crucially, it failed to finish the business of 2003.

That Hyundai departed under a cloud in 2003 can be in little doubt. There was an acrimonious split with Milton Keynes-based Motor Sport Developments, the firm running its rally programme, and there were ongoing 'discussions' with the FIA over the fine for its early and unplanned WRC departure.

But now there is new thinking on both sides. The way the WRC works is vastly different from the cash-counts-for-everything world that the Korean manufacturer left nine years ago.

Undoubtedly, a big budget remains the first box to tick for any make seeking success - Citroen provides current proof of this and Volkswagen, if you listen to service park speculation, is ready to provide an ongoing demonstration from the start of next season. But it's not a precursor to world domination.

VW's striking Polo will take a bow in 2013's WRC

Far stricter technical and sporting regulations nowadays restrict the opportunity to come in and buy success. Transmissions and turbos are FIA standard parts; gone are the days of employing the world's best auto-electro boffins to tune your car's gearchange to be measured in zilli-seconds.

It's difficult not to consider what went before when looking over Hyundai's future plans and intentions in the WRC. In the early 2000s, the car and the team were good, whether they would ever have been great is another matter.

From Hyundai's perspective, the major difference between now and then is the state of the company itself. At the turn of the last century, a Hyundai was not really the car you wanted sitting on your driveway. In fairness, the news of landing an Accent at the hire car desk was usually taken in a similar fashion to a condemned man learning his fate.

That's all changed now.

Hyundai make good cars now. And lots of them.

Hyundai is the fourth biggest carmaker in the world - with around half the three million motors produced each year coming out of the planet's biggest integrated car plant in Ulsan (south-east South Korea).

And Hyundai is selling those cars as well. And harvesting tens of billions in worldwide revenue from those sales.

Oh yes, Hyundai is a very different place from what it once was.

Hyundai's last WRC effort, with the Accent, petered out in 2003 © LAT

The precise nature of the firm's return to the WRC has yet to be decided, but it's certain that it won't mirror the set-up run a decade ago.

In partnership with MSD, Hyundai developed and ran the Formula Two Coupe in 1998 before launching the Accent WRC in 2000. The Coupe should have won Hyundai the FIA 2-Litre World Cup for Manufacturers in 1999, but was pipped by Renault and its glorious Maxi Megane, which was on a part-programme in the WRC.

When 2000 came and the Accent was launched it failed to make any kind of a mark. Quite simply, Hyundai wanted its first World Rally Car up and running way too early.

The Beta engine, which had failed to deliver in the F2 car, was fitted to the Accent in the hopes that bolting a Garrett turbo on the side would sort the problem. It didn't.

The lack of suspension travel and short wheelbase didn't make the Accent an ideal WRC platform, but MSD battled on manfully with drivers like Alister McRae, Kenneth Eriksson, Juha Kankkunen, Freddy Loix and Armin Schwarz eventually hauling it towards the points in the years that followed.

The final incarnation of the Accent, the WRC3, which made its debut in Corsica in 2002, was by no means a bad car. With reliability more or less sorted and the introduction of an active rear differential, the car was finishing more rallies and finishing more rallies in the points.

Graham Moore's switch from Prodrive to MSD offered the programme a big boost, but there was still the feeling that Hyundai's top brass wanted more for less.

The lack of any motorsport tradition or community in South Korea undoubtedly made it difficult for MSD boss David Whitehead to convey the kind of timescales required to build a world winner in those days of white-hot WRC competition.

And in the end, the whole thing came tumbling down in the autumn of 2003.

The early part of that season had been a deeply troubled time for those involved, with the crews reportedly not being paid and test sessions appearing to be a thing of the past; the Loix-Schwarz factory cars arrived at shakedown in Monte Carlo at the start of 2003 in the same set-up they had left Sanremo the previous year, with settings for the season opener being little more than guesswork.

Paris today marks a new start for all concerned. Paris today marks the end of a story that started in 2006, when Hyundai revealed a drawing of its next World Rally Car - a car it wanted to be built and run as a Hyundai through and through.

It took a little longer for that dream to be delivered, but judging from the interest in the car in France this morning, the hangover from the firm's last WRC nightmare might just have passed.