At next week’s Los Angeles Auto Show, Porsche will unveil its next 911 derivative: the 911 Dakar. So now one on stilts. There hasn’t been a sports car like this for many years – certainly not from Porsche. In itself, the Porsche 911 with the internal designation 953 was a rustically modified version of the Porsche 911 G model. The stilted athlete was developed for the 1984 Dakar Rally – in the typical blue and white Rothmans livery. The biggest difference was not the increase in performance to around 300 hp, but the heavily modified chassis together with the raised body and all-wheel drive, which was later installed in the Porsche 959.
In recent years, there have been photos of camouflaged prototypes of the 911 series 992 from test sites in the desert, on ice, snow and on the road, which were on the road with a significant increase in ground clearance and off-road tires. The camouflage foils will be removed at the Los Angeles Auto Show – the favorite fair of the Zuffenhausen residents – next Thursday and the sports car world can decide for itself whether the cross between a Porsche 911 and an off-road vehicle is more up-to-date than ever or simply superfluous. Nothing should stand in the way of the sales success of the Porsche 911 Dakar, because it is probably the most unusual Porsche that you can currently buy.
As part of the testing, the developers working with overall project manager Achim Lamparter drove the off-road 911 over their own off-road proving grounds, but under extreme conditions over 500,000 kilometers around the world – 10,000 kilometers of them on unpaved roads. On the southern French test track Chateau Lastours, among other things, the driving behavior on typical rally tracks was tested and the chassis was tuned. “The Dakar teams come here to test their cars before the rally in Europe,” says Porsche works driver Romain Dumas, “I knew what a 911 could do on the road. But how well the car performed on gravel was an absolute surprise for me.” Among other things, the 911 Dakar had to prove itself on sandy tracks and in high dunes. “The 911 Dakar also showed superior performance in the desert,” says Frank Moser, Head of Sports Car Series at Porsche short wheelbase ensures lots of driving fun. I was able to convince myself of this during test drives in the Sahara.” And in the coming year, the customer can decide how popular the stilt 911 will be.
