Le Mans through the scrapyard: South Korea’s forgotten project Genesis will hope to overcome

You can imagine that Genesis will become the first South Korean manufacturer to compete in the Le Mans 24 Hours Its upcoming LMDH will come on the grid in 2026But you would be wrong. Thirty years before the expected arrival of the Hyundai brand, another campaign was run at the Circuit de la Sarthe by a car manufacturer from an Asian country.

SsangYong attacked French enduro in 1996. It was an interesting attack, not least because it came from an ex-Formula 1 driver with a Le Mans victory on his CV.

Bertrand Gachot, 1991 Le Mans winner with Mazda, who enjoyed (or perhaps endured) a nomadic F1 career with Onyx, Rial, Colony, Jordan, Larousse and Pacifica, was looking to hang up his helmet and seek a new career . There were occasions when he was recruited by a producer who was just entering Europe. It started selling cars in the UK in 1994.

“I wanted to get out of driving and go into business,” says the Belgian, who raced at Le Mans in 1994 and ’95 with Honda during his final season in F1 with Pacifica. “I felt like I’d done my part, I’d got my time.”

To this effect, he traveled to South Korea with Ko Gotoh, who was a shareholder in the Pacific and, says Gachot, “had business interests all over the world”. A meeting with SsangYong resulted in a request to take a brand that came into existence in 1988 to Le Mans.

“They were an emerging brand and wanted to change their image, which was more focused on things like trucks,” recalls Gachot, whose time in F1 will always be remembered for the races he drove rather than any of the 47 Didn’t do it. Did – Michael Schumacher made his Grand Prix debut with Jordan at Spa in 1991 after the home driver was jailed for attacking a London car driver. “They asked if we could take them to Le Mans and they gave us a very small budget. It was a crazy project.”

Gachot says the deal offered was not limited to seven figures and came with only one condition: any car bearing the Ssangyong name that would be taken to Le Mans had to be powered by a Mercedes engine. This was because it had a technology tie-up with the German manufacturer and used its powerplants in its range.

Gachot’s response to SsangYong’s request was to select the quirky central seat LMP2 chassis built by Welter Racing, one of which had claimed outright pole for Le Mans in ’95. In it they installed a Mercedes two-litre four-cylinder engine in turbocharged form in place of the original Peugeot unit.

Gachot made a deal with Nicholson-McLaren Engines in the UK to convert four-pot Mercedes road engines into racing powerplants. He recalls, “I asked him what he wanted, and he said, ‘Five blocks but you have to get them from the junkyard.’

They now had an engine to go with the WR chassis of 1994 vintage – and required only minor modifications to the engine mount and bellhousing – but what they did not have was a team.

Reason for the strange request? Cast iron engine blocks get stronger over time as they go through heat cycles. That’s why the prominent casting of the BMW turbo that took Nelson Piquet to the F1 World Championship with Brabham in 1983 was nothing new. Stories of workers in BMW engine guru Paul Roche’s department urinating on the blocks in order to somehow speed up the aging process may or may not be true.

“Nicholson-McLaren made a very good engine for us, very powerful,” explains Gachot. They now had an engine to go with the WR chassis of 1994 vintage – and required only minor modifications to the engine mount and bellhousing – but they did not have a team.

“We didn’t have a single screwdriver,” explains Gachot, who partnered with Le Mans entrant Jean Messaoudi to build a structure to drive the car. “We created a kind of virtual team: we rented everything and brought in some mechanics I knew from F1.”

Gachot obtained entry for the race under his own name, preceded by the abbreviation PGM: this stood for Pretty Good Management and was the company under which he worked as a racing driver. However, his position with race organizer Automobile Club de l’Ouest only brought him to what we now call test day. It was a competitive season at the time, at least for some competitors: Gachot would have to prequalify in late April if SsangYong’s entry was to advance to race week in June.

It didn’t work out as planned. Gachot, the only driver to drive a WR-SsangYong in prequalifying, did not make the cut. A problem in the afternoon, which this writer remembers was not disclosed at the time, took the car off the track, only for it to be hit by another entrant – one of WR’s works! This will not bring it back on track.

This is not the end of SsangYong’s story at Le Mans. Gachot and the car were back at the venue in September for the event known as the Autumn Cup at the permanent Bugatti circuit.

What Gachot’s WR may or may not have shown at this event is not entirely clear, partly because he admits his memory of the project is a bit shaky 30 years later and because contemporaneous reports, including those from Autosport, are short and sweet. Were. A motley field did not demand significant coverage: entry was limited, although the four-hour event featured a courage contest with a pair of Porsche-powered LMP prototypes and the works WR squad.

Speaking to Autosport, Gachot was initially convinced that his WR’s appearance on the short circuit at Le Mans occurred before prequalifying day, not after. He remembers a throttle problem that certainly came up at the Bugatti event – ​​and insists the WR-SsangYong LM94 led one of the pair of two-hour heats.

His recollection is not supported by autosport and history books. But the SsangYong-powered P2 Gachot, shared with Emmanuel Clerico, set the second-fastest qualifying time behind the Welter Racing entry, just over nine tenths in arrears.

He finished eighth in the first heat but failed to see the checkered flag in the second. This may or may not be the result of the throttle problem that Gachot talks about.

This was the end of SsangYong’s temporary Le Mans program. It did not renew the agreement with Gachot – the following year the company was taken over by Daewoo at the beginning of its peripatetic existence. The brand would remain under the control of Mahindra and Shanghai Automotive for years and is today known as KGM, short for KG Mobility.

The Belgian continued racing a bit – in 1997 he participated in a handful of All-Japan GT Championship rounds and returned to Le Mans in a customer Porsche 911 GT1 – but that same year, he began importing Hype energy drinks. Gave. France. By 2000, he became the company’s CEO.

But he has fond, if hazy, memories of his time connecting with a South Korean carmaker most people had never heard of.

“You know the story: The bigger you are, the faster you are,” he says. “I hope I don’t join that club, but we were fast on that little Bugatti circuit against the big cars.

“I’m sure we had the lead at some point before the problem, but I definitely remember leaving the circuit happy that we had proven something. We were disappointed, but we knew we had performed well. Our little package was very fast.”