Quote Originally Posted by Langdale Forest
Future WRC champion Conrad Rautencrash's dad owns a diamond mine i think....
Yeah you're sort of on the right track. He does some mining...

Quote Originally Posted by Wikipedia
Billy Rautenbach, also known as Muller Conrad Rautenbach (born 23 September 1959), is a multimillionaire Zimbabwean businessman. He is known for his aggressive business tactics and is known to have close links to ZANU-PF and the regime of Robert Mugabe. Before he was 40, Rautenbach's business empire had spread in more than a dozen African countries even as far afield as Australia and Europe earning him the nickname "Napoleon of Africa". Rautenbach is currently on a travel ban list in both the European Union and United States. He was added to the EU blacklist in January 2008, and the US blacklist towards the end of 2008 for his alleged involvement with the Mugabe regime. It is alleged he has aided Robert Mugabe’s regime financially, regardless of current international sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe to limit Robert Mugabe’s grip of power. A noticeable proportion of the funds made available to Robert Mugabe were used to pay his security forces help keep him in power. Mugabe, grateful for financial support often returned the favour to Rautenbach and similar financiers in exchange for dubious and lucrative drilling and mining deals with companies based in countries such as the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands and so on, both of which could be seen as having a lack of regulation in place therefore making it easier to transfer funds to Zimbabwe. He currently owns the Volvo franchise in Zimbabwe, the country's largest freight company and vast tracts of agricultural land, which includes land used for crocodile rearing. Rautenbach was wanted in South Africa where he faced hundreds of charges of alleged fraud, corruption and other crimes including his connection with his own South African company named Wheels of Africa Group in the 1990s. The group, which was the distributor for Korean car firm Hyundai in South Africa and Botswana, was liquidated in December 1999. At that time, he had property worth millions seized from him. These include a farm in the Western Cape worth more than R30 million, hunting safaris, a falcon executive jet, a bell 407 helicopter and a yacht, which have since been returned to him. The charges against Rautenbach include the theft of 1,300 cars from Hyundai, bribing customs officials and fraudulently reducing the tax liability of Wheels of Africa's subsidiaries. He fled South Africa in 1999 after justice department investigators raided his office and home. In 2009, he reached a bargain plea with the South African authorities to pay a fine of 40 million rand.
Of course this is Wikipedia, thus it isn't a totally reliable source. Especially considering he is claimed to have stolen 1,300 Hyundais. Ok Hyundai is getting better, but 1,300 of them!

Toshi Arai has been a Subaru stalwart for a long time, we might have seen similar by Possum Bourne perhaps if he was still alive. Though most seem to have some major sponsor on their cars. And a lot of it would be self funded.

Where do the Netherlands guys get their money from? Kuipers etc. and the Irish? As they run (or ran in Irelands case) a lot of top WRC cars in their national championships