The grapevine has it for quite some time now that Rally and Rallycross veteran Swede Per Eklund is building a Volkswagen Beetle R for RallyCross use in the 2013 GRC and Global X Games series.
It is already a couple of months ago that ERC24 has got the information that Swedish Rally and Rallycross veteran Per Eklund is working on a VW Beetle R SuperCar for a to be named driver to compete in the 2013 Global RallyCross Championship. Beside of continuing to race in the United States the GRC is set to go global next year by featuring in the Global X Games of Foz do Iguaçu in Brazil (April 18 to 21), Barcelona in Spain (May 9 to 12), Munich in Germany (June 27 to 30) as well as on “home soil” in Los Angeles (August 1 to 4). ERC24 understood from its source that the Beetle is in the making as some kind of PR stunt for Volkswagen to impress potential car buyers in North and South America.
We were trying to hide our information till time deemes ripe, but understood that it has already started to leak to the press and has become an issue during the recent 2012 ‘Rallylegend’ event that took place from October 11 to 14 in San Marino, Italy. In the Spanish magazine ‘Cronomotor’ it has been claimed that the new VW Beetle for Rallycross should be based on an Audi TT, while we were told that one of Eklund’s Saab 9-3 SuperCars should be the donor for a lot of stuff (chassis, drivetrain, etc). However, as good old Per, who drove a replica of a Volkswagen Motorsport Group 2 Golf Mk1 in Italy, was claimed to be the leak himself, it seems that our information are more than just rumours.