It’s how I like to spend my dry January: with sand and sunscreen, watching the famous Dakar Rally.
I’m here with Dacia
Exactly, Dacia.
The producers of the cheapest new car in Britain-the £14,000 Sandero supermini. They’re a million-pound budget desert buggy (“Dacia Sandhero?”) geared for the toughest off-road race in the world.
It’s known as the Dakar: 3,200 miles of torture over the majestic sand dunes of Saudi Arabia. In other words, all of the WRC season shoehorned into just 13 days. Add in the non-competitive road sections dividing each timed stage, and it is Formula 1’s whole season. All of this happens in under two weeks. It’s certainly a tough task, then.
Life's too short.
Well, at least this is the plan for Dacia with its planned new SUV model, the Bigster.
Think of a rival to the Nissan Qashqai. To get noticed in such a crowded sector, they will need to make some noise, and Dakar provides a pretty decent opportunity to do this.
Denis Le Vot, ‘When we resurrected the brand, we thought about what should a Dacia stand for and came to “strong and adventurous; simple yet stylish.’
"‘Wow, this is the Dakar!’ all previous activities of ours were stopped and we let them go. Like the Italian approach to football and the English approach to rugby, we’d concentrate our efforts on one major endeavor and do it right.
"Dakar is a new chance for Dacia; it brings the brand to a whole new level.
The 3-liter V6 twin-turbo engine in the desert racer spews 360 horsepower to all four wheels. It’s got impressive suspension travel on 37-inch tires and an aerospace steel roll cage to boot.
This thing probably has more wires and software code than a SpaceX rocket.
There’s a 520-liter capacity fuel tank, ten times that of a Sandero.
Prodrive British engineers have sent a backup team of 62 to Saudi Arabia.
Obviously, there isn't a powerful V6 engine-equipped model in Dacia's lineup, so they teamed with their Nissan counterparts and lifted units from the Nissan Z sports car.
Today is the sixth day of the amazing rally, and Dacia remains a hot contender.
A puncture yesterday on the 258-miles stage dropped superstar driver Nasser al-Attiyah from second to seventh place. However, there is still quite a way to go. “The Dakar is such a thing that anything can happen in it. But we will keep pushing on. We have what it takes to win,” said the five-time champion to me. On day three, team-mate Sebastien Loeb rolled his buggy and retired with a broken roll cage.
Yesterday, those Ford M-Sport Raptor of the former year’s winner Carlos Sainz rolled.
I said, the toughest race in the world.
A Dacia Duster has been bought for £24,000 by the rich owner of Prodrive.
‘‘On a farm, we have a 17-year-old Subaru. This one is not running. The Duster is due to arrive next week.’’ said David Richards, the motorsport expert in front of Dacia’s Dakar initiative
I plan to use it on certain days. My wife will also make use of it. Those in the vicinity of the farm will utilize it as well. When the children return home on weekends, they will use it too. We only need a few baby seats for our grandchildren.
