So i was wondering what kind of mods that the WRC accents had running in their cars. were they all beta swapped or were they just built up alphas? it would be nice to get our hands on some of the one off mods they built for those cars and mass produce them for all accent owners.

 

They were Betas.

 

betas, just replicated of the highest lighest quality lightweight metals. with bigger bore too. don't know the numbers but they're all set to WRC standards. the tiburon had a built beta as well which is why they most certainly should have gone with a Tiburon WRC instead. i mean they were complete numb idiots not to have further developed the Tiburon like Citroen did with the Xsara F2 --> Xsara WRC. Look where Citroen are now, on top of the world, while the accent WRC shamed the world and Hyundai crawled back into its hole...

WRC cars aren't that much different from regular cars which is SO awesome that i don't know how nobody likes or pays attention to other forms of racing where their cars aren't even remotely similar, and the headlights are stickers. Pffffff. at least in WRC you get to take a part of it with you every time you drive.

 

The LC Accent is a much stiffer platform than the RD Tiburons. Owning an Accent and working on several RD's and J2's has shown me that. The floor structure on the Accent is at least twice as sturdy as an RD. And an RD isn't bad, it's just that the Accent is incredibly beefy. The Accent WRC wasn't doomed because they chose the Accent, it was doomed because they went into WRC half-assed. Nobody goes into WRC half assed and comes up with a winning car.

 

^that is correct. i recall they did great with what they had, and got paid so little for such hard work. they had no financial commitment from Korea and began complaining about it.

but what i'm referring to is it costs millions upon millions to develop and manufacture a WRC car to begin with. MSD was already producing the coupe, they already has trained technicians who were familiar with it. it takes at least 5 years to fully develop a WRC car and get results. Hyundai attempted it in less than 2 years.

The Accent can be stiff, but given the roll bars the F2 coupe had were nearly identical I don't think stiffness would have been the issue. They could have saved money, further developed the coupe. they were only after promotion, saying that being involved in the WRC would give it the promotion it needed to gain people's confidence. the coupe would have gotten more attention being the only coupe in the WRC and would have received as much respect as the Celica GT-4. it was already getting a lot of attention by being the only F2 televised on speedvision reports. but instead the accent was almost non-existant.

one of the reasons they turned to the accent was because it's an ideal WRC car with great classic rally shape (low front, sedan, high hatch with big spoiler) and good visibility. but i recall reading a long time ago in some business report that they had always planned to use the accent in WRC. they used the coupe as an introduction to the WRC to see what they were capable of achieving. the first reason they didn't initially turn the coupe into a 4WD WRC coupe was because the sport was new to them and they didn't want to spend a lot of money. the F2 class is a much more reliable and cheap class, with much less rivalry. it's usually the "safer" route. the coupe was like a test car (hence why they hired Eriksson and McRae! When have you heard of two professional WRC drivers moving from WRC to Kit cars?!) if results were good (which they were, the clarion team would have won Gold but McRae rolled on the last stage in GB) they would enter the accent in the WRC, as they later did. the second reason they didn't develop a 4WD WRC coupe is because the tiburon was already being phased out and they didn't want to have an aging model into the WRC. their plan was flawed to begin with. with SCCA cars in 1996, and a F2 Kit car (with stock tiburon body) winning Asia-Pacific and Australian rallies in 1997, Hyundai admitted they were late. The Kit car was a kit car for too long. Instead of developing an Evo 2, from the Evo 1, they should have taken the Evo 1 and developed a WRC coupe with Peter Stevens for 1998.

besides these reasons, what was the point in changing models when it's the same engine, same transmission, same suspension, same everything? it was only for promotion. they wanted a fresh model going into 2000 with a clean start. and this my friend is where the flaw that ultimately led to disaster was.

 

2 reasons:

1: The LC was a better platform for rallying when built to full potential than the RD.
2: Just because you share some components doesn't mean it doesn't matter what car they're on.

The Accent WRC was the right choice for Hyundai if they wanted to win. Sure, moving ahead with the RD would have been cheaper to start with but in the end they knew it would be more expensive to be competitive, and advertising a product that they were no longer producing.

 

haha shows how much I know. I always thought they threw in a 4g63 from an evo and called it a day. I was under the assumption that the accent wrc was 95% a totally different car with the left over 5% the body of an accent.

 

^haha well rally cars back then were very similar to their homogolated versions, just stripped down to the shell and with some switches here and there. there's a race mode and drive mode. a lot of people don't know the other side of rallying--in between stages. they race on normal highways trying to get to the time check in. it's spectacular.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>1: The LC was a better platform for rallying when built to full potential than the RD.
2: Just because you share some components doesn't mean it doesn't matter what car they're on.</div>

while i agree on both aspects, the accent was only a newer designed car. i think both would have full potential given the budget. but their problem was Hyundai were a late WRC contender. i liked schwarz, he was a great driver but made many petty mistakes. he did that with Ford a lot. i think that had mostly to do with the lack of testing with the car since the team had such a limited budget. kankkunen and loix were more persistent but seemed to ease off a little also due to the budget.

i liked the accent WRC a lot. my favorite is the 2003 spec without the castrol livery. lovely car. i wonder why they took off the big wing and replaced it with that scrawny one. the brake disk glows on the monte carlo night stage hairpins and the flaming heated exhaust tip you see coming out of the hairpin. beautiful. i forget that whole era is when the embezzlement was going on in korea. poor team... it just all turned into a disaster. i was on world rally radio that year and my concern over hyundai was broadcasted over the whole world. their answer to my question was that surprised, saddened schwarz sat in the sideline watching WRC san remo racing without him.

 

was the accent really stiffer? i thought the tiburon was marketed as the stiffest body of its class & lineup?

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<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Beta</div>
More importantly, TURBO BETA smile.gif