Stuttgart - Porsche is set to launch its first off-roading sports car, the 911 Dakar, at the Los Angeles Auto Show next week.
While the idea may seem a little weird, Porsche is no stranger to the concept, having won the Paris-Dakar rally as far back as 1984 in a modified 911, which had been fitted with a four-wheel drive system for the first time.
Porsche hasn’t shared any of the technical details as yet, but Autocar speculates that the 911 Dakar will be fitted with the 331kW flat-six that powers the Carrera 4S. Other obvious modifications include raised suspension and off-road tyres, but we’ll only know the full extent of the mods next week.
In the meantime, Porsche has put its new off-road sports car through some extensive testing regimes all over the world, covering over 500 000km.
For instance, the Château de Lastours test track in southern France, with plenty of loose surfaces, was used to test the car’s handling on typical rally courses and fine-tune the suspension. This is where Dakar teams come to test their cars in Europe before the rally.
Porsche works driver Romain Dumas was assigned to test drive the new 911 at this French course and at first he was puzzled by the assignment. But the astonishment quickly gave way to admiration for the Dakar’s spirited off-road performance. Even jumps were no problem for the chassis thanks to the robust design and increased ground clearance.
“I knew what a 911 could do on the road,” Dumas said, “but I was absolutely stunned by how well the car performed here on the loose.”
The 911 Dakar also had experienced its fair share of ice driving, with double WRC champion Walter Röhrl through its paces at the extensive testing grounds in Arjeplog, Sweden.
“The car is incredibly fun to drive,” Röhrl said. “Everything works so precisely and calmly. No Porsche customer will believe all the things you can do with this car before they’ve driven it themselves.”
The 911 Dakar was also subjected to fast sand tracks and steep dunes in Dubai and Morocco, in temperatures of up to 45 degrees Celsius.
Stay tuned for more info when the 911 Dakar is revealed in full next Thursday.