Flying Spur

Make
Bentley
Segment
Sedan

Having replaced the lackluster Getz in 2008, the Hyundai i20 may not be the first car to come to mind when you think of the World Rally Championship. (In fact, North American consumers probably wouldn't think of the i20 at all, as the European-market micro-hatch is even smaller than the Accent. But we digress.) Hyundai, however, is keen to change that with the new i20 WRC you see here. The rally-spec hatchback represents Hyundai's return to the World Rally Championship after a nearly decade-long absence.

Announced at the Paris Motor Show, the Korean automaker's new WRC program will supposedly be run in-house as opposed to outsourced to an independent racing team - although it failed to mention in which class, exactly, it would be competing. Hyundai released unfortunately few details to go with these two images, but assuming the program puts the i20 rally car in the top tier of the championship, it'll be going up against the likes of the Ford Fiesta, Citroen DS3, Mini Countryman and Volkswagen Polo rally cars in an attempt to show them all that smaller really can be better.