As Peugeot withdrew from the championship following the ban of Group B, Kankkunen moved to Lancia and became the first driver to successfully defend his title.

Following Toyota's disqualification and 12-month ban in 1995, Kankkunen did not return to active participation in the series until joining Ford halfway through the 1997 season replacing an underperforming Armin Schwarz.

The season ended in controversy, when first Group B cars were banned for the next season after Henri Toivonen's fatal accident at the Tour de Corse, which outraged Peugeot team principal Jean Todt,[9] and later the French Peugeot team were excluded at the Rallye Sanremo in Italy, resulting in a triple win for home country's Lancia.

Despite the 205 T16s passing the pre-rally scrutiny, the stewards had decreed on re-examination that the cars' underbody fins were in fact illegal side skirts.

[10] The FIA deemed the team's Sanremo exclusion illegal and annulled the results of the event, making Kankkunen the youngest champion in the history of the series.

In a close battle for the drivers' world championship title, he edged out his teammates Biasion and Alén by winning the season-ending RAC Rally.

Although he finished fifth in his first event with the Toyota Supra Turbo at the Safari Rally, his title defense quickly proved unsuccessful.

Kankkunen retired due to engine problems in three consecutive rallies and did not add to his points tally, finishing only 37th in the drivers' standings.

Returning to the wheel of a Peugeot 205 T16, he won the Dakar Rally on his first attempt after compatriot and teammate Ari Vatanen's 405 T16 was famously stolen while he was leading the event.

Kankkunen gave the GT-Four its first victory in the Rally Australia and finished third at the Tour de Corse and at the RAC.

Halfway through the season, Kankkunen found himself only fourth in the championship and Toyota in the lead with their new star driver Carlos Sainz.

Although Kankkunen later repeated his win in Australia and collected his fifth podium of the season in Sanremo, Sainz went on to take a dominant title.

By winning the RAC ahead of Kenneth Eriksson and Sainz, Kankkunen became the first man to seal a third drivers' title since the World Rally Championship's 1973 inauguration.

Sainz's victory in the RAC ahead of Ari Vatanen and Kankkunen, combined with Auriol's retirement, confirmed the title in favour of the Spaniard.

[17] At the season's half-way point, Kankkunen and Subaru's Sainz tied the lead in the championship, but a few poor results soon dropped him out of the title fight; in Argentina and Sanremo, he suffered from mechanical problems and in Finland, he won the opening stage but lost 20 minutes on stage two after rolling his car.

In 1995, with two more rallies to go, Kankkunen's consistent performances during the season had kept him in the lead of the championship seven points ahead of Subaru's Colin McRae.

At the penultimate round, the Rally Catalunya, he was leading by almost a minute over Sainz and McRae and seemed to be heading towards his first WRC victory on tarmac, as well as closing in on his fifth title.

Halfway through the 1997 season, Kankkunen joined the Ford Motor Company factory team to replace a disappointing Armin Schwarz.

In his home rally in Finland, he lost the win to the defending world champion, Mitsubishi's Tommi Mäkinen, by only seven seconds.

[22] A fourth runner-up spot followed in the season-ending RAC Rally, now ahead of the Spaniard who had by then lost the title to Mäkinen.

Kankkunen stayed with Ford for the 1998 season with Belgian driver Bruno Thiry as his new teammate, after Sainz had opted to re-join Toyota.

[25] For the 2002 season, Hyundai initially offered Kankkunen a full 14-event programme, which did not interest him, and the deal was modified to include only the nine gravel rallies.

However, Kankkunen and the team's full-time drivers Freddy Loix and Armin Schwarz did narrowly give Hyundai its career-best fourth place in the manufacturers' world championship.

Following his retirement, Kankkunen announced his intention to enter politics, echoing the career path of rallying compatriot Ari Vatanen.

[28] Kankkunen, along with former NHL star Jari Kurri, has also been a shareholder in a company that builds luxury real estate in Ruka, Finland.

[31] In early 2007, Kankkunen set a new world speed record on ice in his privately owned Bentley Continental GT on the frozen Gulf of Bothnia near Oulu, Finland.

Kankkunen currently lives in Monaco but also spends time on his family farm in Laukaa, which includes a large country house and hundreds of hectares of land.