It's a brand positioning exercise IMO. Guessing with Citroen, Peugeot and Opel already using x% of the parts, and all these motorsports departments under one roof, it's probably easy for them to do it ahead of feasible EV motorsport in the future.
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The Lancia Ypsilon road car has a 1.2L gasoline engine.
They just market it as HF, in a very same manner that Skoda market their product as "Fabia RS Rally2" despite actual road-going Fabia RS not existing since 2014, same as Ford with the "Fiesta RS WRC" without actual RS version of Fiesta ever existing.
What an audacity.
But at least they all had the same power source as the rally cars (an ICE) and Ford did have performance versions of the Fiesta (ST) and an RS Focus. Even Hyundai had their N range of road cars to promote by rallying. But now none of these exist to buy. :(
Lancia are going even further though, promoting a future EV with an ICE rally car. Bizarre.
current 'car segment' used in wrc is the "b-segment small cars / subcompacts", right?
examples: c3, yaris, mini hatch, fiesta, fabia, ibiza, 208, a1...
is this your favorite car segment? cuz I feel we may be moving "up" in the next years, with all the SUV thing.
i think if i were to choose, i'd rather have segment-a cars (fiat500, picanto, up!, twingo, aygo, i10, citigo). i like those smaller cars with big wings, reminds me some of the hillclimb machines.
haha i also love those k-cars from japan. they seem very "oh, this is what road cars should look like". that and those weird "tuk-tuk' taxis they have all over asia haha