Kievari Rantapirtti, located about 30 miles outside Jyväskylä in the heart of Finland’s ‘1000 Lakes’ region, is occasionally referred to as the ‘House of Kalle’.
Rovanperä, that is: the double World Rally Champion grew up just minutes away and honed his preternatural driving talents at the forest complex, on both its gravel tracks in summer and its frozen ice lake in winter.
Now it’s my turn on that frozen lake – and I’m behind the wheel of a Toyota GR Yaris to boot. Ice is the perfect canvas on which to showcase the hot hatch: power hard into a corner, dab the brakes, turn the wheel, then hit the accelerator, using the throttle pedal to control the slide.
So supremely balanced is the chassis of the GR Yaris that I can almost hear an enthusiastic Finn roaring his approval. “Turn, turn, brake, power, power, power. Yessss, more power!”
Except the enthusiastic Finn isn’t in my head: his name is Cedric and he is sitting in the passenger seat of the GR Yaris, offering tuition intended to turn me from Bumbling Brit into Flying Finn. Cedric is the son of Esko Reiners, who runs a rallying parts supply business and school that has a fleet of such Toyota hot hatches.
He also has some experience here: the first car he ever drove was a Group N Subaru Impreza. On this frozen lake. When he was 10.
That sort of passion for rallying and the need in winter to tackle tricky driving conditions on narrow, undulating roads perhaps explains why this region – home to Finland’s round of the WRC – has produced so many rally drivers. There’s Rovanperä, of course, and his dad Harri.
Then there’s Mikko Hirvonen, Henri Toivonen (plus his circuit-racing brother Harri) and four-time WRC champion Tommi Mäkinen, among others.
