RETURN TO MOTORSPORT
JEP
The Suzuki Story
After sitting in a barn for years, this refurbished title-winning British Rally Championship car is about to return to an event from its heyday.
The luminous yellow paint scheme of Guy Wilks’ works Suzuki Ignis S1600 was hard to miss during its debut British Rally Championship season in 2004. The compact five-door hatchback may have lacked the looks of the WRC machines from Ford, Hyundai or Subaru, but it made its own mark as Wilks and co-driver Phil Pugh went undefeated to win the class title.
Like many rally and race cars, once its glory days faded it was packed away and left to be forgotten. It is Motorsport UK’ s mission to encourage people to bring cars like this back out into competitive action – and that is exactly what Christian Prynne has done.
“ The car was purchased from Suzuki Motorsport by a friend of mine, Iwan Evans, but after stripping and rebuilding it, he then never did anything with it,” says Prynne.“ This is a car you’ ve got to grab by the scruff of the neck and he’ s more of a gentleman driver, so it ended up stuck in the corner of a storage garage until I kind of stole it off him!”
“ We got it back running and have taken it on a few rallies, but this year I plan to compete in the ProTyre Asphalt Rally Championship on some of the events the car did back in 2004. Its original co-driver Phil Pugh will be alongside me, and we’ ve even got the original recce car used by Suzuki and two of their original vans back in team livery.”
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Guy Wilks and Phil Pugh on the Trackrod Rally, Yorkshire, part of the 2006 British Rally Championship
Revolution- February 2026
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