We Take A Look Back At The Career Of Juha Kankkunen

BILSTEIN suspension has played a role in helping countless drivers and car manufacturers win all over the world, with rallying being a particularly fruitful hunting ground. One example of a driver who has competed with BILSTEIN hardware is Juha Kankkunen, one of the greatest rally drivers or all time and the focus of this feature. Kankkunen’s career spanned three of the most significant eras in World Rallying, beginning with Group B, progressing to Group A, before retiring on a high (and while still brutally fast) at the start of the World Rally Car era. Here then, is our look back at the career of one of the fastest Finns of all.

Like many of his rallying countrymen, Kankkunen cut his rallying teeth on Finland’s brutal gravel roads. These unforgiving, tree lined roads shaped the face of world rallying for most of the 1970s and 1980s, two decades largely dominated by Scandinavians. The fact that Kankkunen grew up within spitting distance of Finland’s round of the WRC can’t have hurt, and neither did guidance and help from fellow Finnish rally sensation, Timo Mäkinen. These contacts eventually helped him secure a Toyota Finland supported drive in a Group 4 Celica in 1982, and then a one-off works drive for the factory team the following year.

Safari, So Good
This period saw the start of the Group B era, one that Kankkunen was well placed to take advantage of. That said, the conservative nature of TTE (Toyota Team Europe)’s challenger, the Celica Twin Cam Turbo TA64, meant that outright wins were always going to be challenging. Though somewhat hampered by its rear-wheel drive layout, the Celica was both tough and powerful, and these qualities helped it excel in African rallies.

The East African Safari was arguably at its most hostile and unforgiving in this period, a grueling slog over some of the continent’s most challenging roads. The unforgiving nature of the rally meant that Kankkunen was not expected to win the 1985 event, he was merely there to gain experience and to support his illustrious team mate, Björn Waldegård. The 26 year old put in an incredibly mature drive though, avoiding the myriad obstacles that sidelined many of his more experienced competitors. His eventual win was quite rightly heralded as a turning point in his career, and the likes of Peugeot and Lancia certainly sat up and took notice!

Pug Life
While the Toyota Celica was undoubtedly a worthy car (it won every one of the 6 African events it started), it was also one quite clearly rooted in the Group 4 regulations that had just been superseded. It was always destined to be an also-ran in rallying’s European heartland, so it wasn’t all that surprising that, come 1986, Kankkunen could be found in Peugeot overalls. 1986 was of course the final year of Group B, the season, when the Peugeot 205 T16 went head to head with the Lancia Delta S4 and the Audi Quattro S1 E2, and Kankkunen’s decision to jump ship would prove to be the first of many shrewd moves he’d make in his long career.

The 205T16 E2 was arguably the most complete Group B car of them all. It lacked the technical sophistication of the Delta S4 or the sheer power of the Quattro S1 E2, but it was nimble and reliable, traits that had allowed Timo Salonen to comfortably take the 1985 Drivers’ title and Peugeot the Manufacturers’ crown. Kankkunen joined the team in place of fellow Finn Ari Vatanen, the latter having been sidelined by a horrific accident at Rally Argentina the preceding year, a smash that served to bring the dangers of Group B rallying into stark relief.

The season didn’t start particularly well for Kankkunen, the Monte bringing with it a slew of reliability issues including a fuel system failure. Picking the correct tyres for a Monte run on roads that varied between snow, slush, ice and dry tarmac was also incredibly tricky, and this ultimately meant that Kankkunen’s challenge was somewhat blunted. He eventual finished 5th.

The season picked up for Kankkunen and Peugeot at the next round, Rally Sweden. The Finn’s exemplary car control saw him take the win ahead of Markku Alen, while the retirement of Henri Toivonen’s S4 opened up the fight once again. The championship then pitched up in Portugal and an event that would go down in WRC history for all the wrong reasons, Joaquim Santos’ RS200 plunging off the road and into a packed bank of spectators. Three died and scores more were injured, and all manufacturer entries were withdrawn from the event.

The season would go on to bring yet more tragedy, most famously when Henri Toivonen and Sergio Cresto lost their lives when their Delta S4 plunged off the road in Corsica, a crash that prompted Audi and Ford to pull out for remainder of the year. This undoubtedly played into Kankkunen’s hands, but his sheer speed and ability to consistently rack up points meant that he was always going to be a strong title contender. That said, even Kankkunen would probably have preferred to have won his first title in less contentious circumstances, his battle with Lancia’s Markku Alen ultimately settled by an FIA ruling a few weeks after the season had finished!

Turin Bound
Kankkunen’s success had catapulted him to the top of the WRC pile, and he suddenly found himself with numerous offers for the following year. Once again displaying a clear knack for picking teams, Kankkunen opted to sign with Lancia. The vacuum caused by the banning of Group B left many teams scrabbling around, desperately trying to cobble together a suitable challenger, yet Lancia’s Delta HF 4X4 was perfect. As the name implied, it had four-wheel drive and benefited from a turbocharged inline four. It was also compact and had a Lancia badge, the latter point ensuring that it would never want for funds or development.

The move to Lancia turned out to be even better than even Kankkunen could’ve expected. Lancia had tested the Group A Delta extensively alongside its Group B programme the preceding season, and this meant that the HF was a winner from the very start. Kankkunen ultimately fended off strong competition from Miki Biasion and old rival Markku Alen, both of whom were his team mates. The latter made Kankkunen work for it though, Kankkunen having to wait until his victory on the season-ending RAC to be sure of his title defence.

TTE Terrors
A return to Toyota for 1988 should’ve been the start of something truly great, particularly as Japanese constructors had long favoured production car based rallying, the very essence of the Group A category. Sadly, it wasn’t to be. TTE’s latest challenger was the four-wheel drive Celica GT4 ST165, a car that the more historically minded of you will no doubt recall as being very successful indeed. This is true, but it took two seasons of crushing disappointments and painful retirements to get there, lows which Kankkunen had the misfortune of enduring. A win on the 1989 Rally Australia provided some relief, but that point Kankkunen had grown tired of the car and its constant overheating and had opted to re-sign with Lancia. It was one of the few ‘bad’ career moves you could accuse Kankkunen of making.

Turin Take Two
Back at Lancia for 1990 and re-aquatinted with its all conquering Delta, Kankkunen was back on the pace almost immediately, though by this point the Celica was every bit as potent, and on some rallies it was even quicker. It must’ve been galling for Kankkunen to see the car that had brought him so much frustration storm to the top of the leaderboards, ultimately taking arch rival Carlos Sainz to the Drivers’ title, just ahead of his own team mate Didier Auriol.

1991 was a far more satisfactory season though, as Kankkunen was able to make full use of the Delta HF Integrale 16v. The Lancia was an old car by this point and had all but reached the end of its development cycle, but it was fast, reliable, and a known quantity. That said, it would be wrong to gloss over some of the cars weaknesses, namely its four-wheel drive system (a more old school setup than TTE’s Xtrac transmission) and slightly ‘wooly’ handling. Kankkunen was on fine form throughout the year though, and eventually took 4 outright wins on this way to the Drivers’ title, bagging the Constructors’ gong for Lancia in the process.

The following year saw momentum swing back towards Carlos Sainz and Toyota, the Spaniard securing his second title thanks to a scant, 10 point lead. It was clear that Lancia’s moment in the sun was coming to an end, and with no prospect of a Delta replacement on the horizon, the wily Finn began casting around for alternative options.

Toyota Turnaround
No one was particularly surprised when Juha Kankkunen was announced as Toyota’s lead driver for 1993; Lancia was no longer in the sport as a works entity and the era of Japanese domination had begun. It was yet another perfectly timed move, one that saw him effectively trade places with Carlos Sainz. While the seat-swap worked out fantastically for Kankkunen, the same could not be said for Sainz. He joined the Lancia fold just as the Delta became uncompetitive and was only able to salvage a single victory, while his arch nemesis took the Celica ST185, the car he’d helped to develop, to both titles. The similarities between 1989-1990 and the ST165 weren’t lost on either driver.

A WRC Stalwart
1994 marked the last of Kankkunen’s WRC titles, a record 4 outright wins in some of the most iconic rally machines of all time. He’d go on to drive for Ford and Subaru and was always incredibly quick and rarely out of the points. Fittingly, his final WRC win came in Finland in 1999 at the wheel of the Subaru Impreza WRC, a result that meant he could proudly claim to have won in Group B, Group A and the then new World Rally Championship eras.

The vast majority of Kankkunen’s wins and titles came in cars fitted with BILSTEIN suspension, in rallies as diverse as the East African Safari and the Swedish, so you could make a very good case for BILSTEIN hardware being every bit as versatile as Juha Kankkunen himself!