Auriol won his first World Championship event, the 1988 Tour de Corse, whilst driving a works Ford Sierra RS Cosworth.

He did not win again that season, but the following year he won the Corsica, Argentina and San Remo rallies and went into the final round, in Great Britain, vying again with Sainz for the championship.

In 1995, he took the first win for the Celica GT-Four ST205 in Tour de Corse with Denis Giraudet, who replaced his regular co-driver Bernard Occelli who was experiencing a family problem at that time.

[4] However, later in the same season, on the Rally Catalunya, Toyota were found to have used an illegal device in the turbocharger to increase the power of the engine, and were excluded from the results of the 1995 championship and banned for next year.

Using Auriol's experience, SEAT managed to grab the third podium place at the Safari Rally in Kenya, and later that season to launch their third evolution of the Córdoba WRC.

However at the end of the season the Spanish manufacturer retired from WRC to focus on the development of a special series of high performance cars.