Behold Porsche’s 911 Dakar: ‘A unicorn with wheels’

It took 10 years of lobbying for Porsche to get the 911 Dakar into production. I, for one, am very glad that they went ahead with the project.

Stephen Corby

3 min read

5:00AMMay 30, 2024

The Weekend Australian Magazine

What this wild and crazy 911 does represent is the better world we could have had if Porsche released this, instead of the Cayenne.

When I was a lad, I used to proudly advertise cigarettes on my bedroom walls. I distinctly remember a poster of a Rothmans Medal Winner, which, in a more modern context, sounds like an ironic award you would give to someone who’d smoked a pack a day for decades and not died.

Rothmans was plastered on the F1 cars I watched, and on the bikes of my favourite ever motorcyclists (Wayne Gardner and mighty Mick Doohan). Seeing its famous blue, white and red livery reborn on such a modern, marvellous car as the Porsche 911 Dakar today should trigger happy memories, or perhaps a Pavlovian desire to light up (although I’ve never seen the point in smoking a drug that doesn’t make you funnier), but so trained has my brain become by our Nanny State that all I could think when I saw it was, “Oh dear, are they allowed to do that?” And then: “Will people throw stones at me if I drive it?”

Happily, you don’t have to have your Dakar with this paint scheme, which cunningly replaces the word “Rothmans” from the original car – a mad rally version of the Porsche 911 that not only survived the 10,000km torture test of the Paris Dakar in 1984, but won it – with “Roughroads”. Because when you’re paying almost $500,000 for a vehicle that’s more of a collector’s item than a car – only 2500 will be sold worldwide – you can have what you like (and the Roughroads look is an extra $54,730 anyway, enough for almost two cartons of cigarettes today). You can even have an optional tent ($8,640) that fits to the roof of the Dakar so you can sleep on it, which, as someone who hates camping, sounds about as enticing as being eaten by pigs.

The Dakar really can cope with anything but has full carbon fibre bucket seats so brutal that only a pilates instructor could love them.

What this wild and crazy 911 does represent is the better world we could have had if Porsche had released this as its first-ever SUV, instead of the horrifically ugly and horrifyingly successful Cayenne. Because make no mistake, that’s what the Dakar is, a fully functional SUV that I’d actually want to own. A unicorn with wheels, then.

It’s been jacked up by 50mm (by pressing the Offroad setting you can raise that another 30mm) and given vast wheel arches, stainless steel bash plates, tow bars and all-terrain tyres. It has a roll cage in the rear, which does limit its family friendliness somewhat, and full carbon fibre bucket seats so brutal that only a pilates instructor could love them. And yet, happily, it’s also still a 911, with the same glorious twin-turbocharged 3.0-litre engine you get in a Carrera 4 GTS, making a sand-blasting, boulder-breaking 353kW and 570Nm.

I really, really wanted to take this Dakar up a sand dune, or sideways along a dirt road in the backwoods, but (like many of its owners, no doubt) I was both too busy being important and too worried about damaging it, so I took it up a rocky bit of track next to the local oval and declared myself heroic.

The Dakar really can cope with anything, however, as I’ve been assured by colleagues lucky enough to drive it in extreme conditions. The Offroad mode maximises traction on dunes and rutted surfaces, and even uses something called “differential lock”, which will excite some people with unkempt beards. And the Rally button sets up the all-wheel-drive system for dirt drifting, sending most of the torque to the rear wheels, for maximum fun.

It took 10 years of lobbying to get the Porsche Dakar into production

I laughed at potholes and scoffed at steep driveways and speed humps.

What I got to appreciate instead was just how incredible it still is as a road car, with its long-travel struts and 50 per cent softer springs arguably making it more suited to the bump and grind of real-world driving than the stiffer, lower 911s that less money can buy.

I laughed at potholes and scoffed at steep driveways and speed humps, and yet, somehow, still enjoyed myself enormously around bends, thanks to the typically talkative Porsche steering and communicative chassis. It is, of course, also very, very fast.

What’s truly surprising is that you would expect it to be horribly noisy, thanks to the off-road tyres, but it isn’t. Yes, there’s more engine noise in its naked cabin, but frankly that’s only a good thing when you’ve got the rorty growl of a flat-six Porsche engine on board.

CLICK HERE FOR JEREMY CLARKSON’S VIEW: Porsche 911 Dakar review

Creating the 911 Dakar has been a long journey for Porsche. It took 10 years of lobbying to get it into production and, even then, some within the firm were concerned there wouldn’t be any buyers for what was a truly groundbreaking concept (at least until Lamborghini got in on the act with its similarly styled Sterrato, still one of my top three cars ever).

I, for one, am very glad that they went ahead with the project, and if this was the only SUV Porsche had ever made, all would be forgiven, because it really does represent what the little lad version of me would have expected of an off-roader from the world’s greatest sports car brand.