Hand-in-hand, Chung Euisun and Akio "Together, We Promote the Joy of Motorsports"

Hyundai N and Toyota GR Festival Held in Yongin
Chairmen Lee Jae-yong and Cho Hyun-bum Also Attend for Talks

Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Euisun and Toyota Motor Corporation Chairman Akio Toyoda met on the 27th at Yongin Speedway. The purpose was to widely promote motorsports culture in Korea. This is the first time that the heads of two companies competing not only in the global automobile market but also in car racing events have directly attended and hosted a motorsports event. Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong and Korea & Company Group Chairman Cho Hyun-beom also participated in the event.

The event held that day was named the ‘Hyundai N × Toyota Gazoo Racing (GR) Festival.’ N and GR are words symbolizing the high-performance vehicle lines and motorsports businesses led by each company. N is derived from Hyundai Motor Group’s R&D hub Namyang Research Center and the famous European racing circuit N?rburgring. GR is a combination of the Japanese word for picture or painting and garage, encompassing Toyota’s motorsports division.

About 3,000 people attended the event, including general customers, journalists, and company officials. High-performance production cars from both companies, as well as rally cars that participated in the World Rally Championship (WRC), were exhibited. Various programs were held, such as show runs demonstrating the extreme performance of the vehicles, track days where customers drove the cars themselves on the track, and taxi driving where customers rode along in WRC race cars.

Chairman Chung and Chairman Akio jointly hosted the event to widely promote motorsports culture in Korea, where it is relatively less developed. Chairman Chung has been making efforts to develop motorsports culture domestically, including deciding to participate in the WRC over ten years ago and organizing events like the N Festival.

Chairman Cho Hyun-beom of Korea & Company Group (from the left), Chairman Chung Eui-sun of Hyundai Motor Group, and Chairman Lee Jae-yong of Samsung Electronics are watching the vehicles practicing together at the Hyundai N Toyota GR Festival held on the 27th at Yongin Speedway.
[Photo by Yonhap News]

Chairman Akio is very active, even participating in races under the name ‘Morizo.’ He also holds the position of ‘Master Driver’ within the company. He personally drives and inspects new cars at the final stage of development. On this day, Chairman Chung and Chairman Akio demonstrated a co-driving show run.

Chairman Chung said, "When I saw him earlier this year in Japan, I was very happy to receive the proposal to hold an event together because both companies are serious about racing," adding, "Chairman Akio, whom I respect most in the automotive industry, is someone I am trying hard to learn from." Chairman Akio said, "I was very pleased when we talked about this event earlier this year," and added, "We will work together with Hyundai to create better cars and the future of mobility."

Hyundai N showcased race cars such as the i20N Rally1 Hybrid and i20N Rally2 for customer racing, as well as the Ioniq 5 N Drift Spec and Rolling Lab RN24 runs. Thierry Neuville, Dani Sordo, and Andreas Mikkelsen from Hyundai Motorsport, ranked first in this season’s WRC standings, participated. Toyota GR demonstrated the GR Yaris Rally 1 Hybrid and GR Yaris Rally 2. Katsuta Takamoto and Jari-Matti Latvala participated. Katsuta Norihiko, a nine-time Japanese rally champion and father of Takamoto, also took part.

Hyundai Motor Rolling Lab RN24
Photo by Hyundai Motor Group

Toyota high-performance and racing vehicles exhibited at the Hyundai N Toyota GR Festival on the 27th
[Photo by Hyundai Motor Group, Toyota Motor Korea]

Chairman Akio also drove a WRC race car with customers onboard as part of the WRC taxi program. Dozens of cars, including race cars participating in the show run and customer vehicles in the track day, took part in a parade lap on the track. Chairman Chung and Chairman Akio led the parade, driving the Ioniq 5 N Drift Spec and GR Yaris Rally 1 Hybrid vehicles, respectively.

Both companies donated all ticket sales proceeds to the Korea Automobile Racing Association to contribute to the expansion of the domestic motorsports base. The WRC teams of both companies will participate in the final round of this season’s WRC, the FORUM8 Rally Japan, held over four days starting from the 21st of next month.

Hyundai i20N rally car drifting
[Photo by Hyundai Motor Group]