The rally-bred variant of the iconic sports car has undergone 300,000 grueling development miles, and Porsche has pronounced it ready to take on dunes, loose gravel, ice, and snow.
At the Los Angeles Auto Show on 16 November 2022, Porsche unveiled a very special variant of the iconic 911: the new 911 Dakar. It will be the first two-door sports car to offer outstanding off-road capabilities.
The model name is a nod to the first overall victory by Porsche in the Paris-Dakar rally. The breakthrough triumph came in 1984 in a modified Porsche 911 – which had been fitted with an all-wheel-drive system for the first time.
In testing the car, the development engineers around General Project Manager Achim Lamparter didn’t only restrict themselves to intensive use of the off-road proving grounds in Weissach. In fact, the development team tested the 911 Dakar around the world under extreme conditions to the tune of more than half a million km, including more than 10,000 km off-road. The Château de Lastours test track in southern France, for example, was used to test the car’s handling on typical rally courses and fine-tune the suspension.
Porsche brand ambassador Jörg Bergmeister was also able to test the 911 Dakar as part of the car’s development and was surprised by the driving dynamics of the unusually high-riding sports car on both loose surfaces and asphalt: “I wouldn’t have thought that a vehicle with such ground clearance and all-terrain tyres would still feel like a Porsche 911 on asphalt,” he says. Development driver Lars Kern was also surprised during the final fine-tuning drives: “At first I didn’t have the nerve to push the car to its limits. But I am very satisfied with the handling on loose surfaces. Even the ABS is optimised for braking on gravel. It’s amazing how much traction the off-road tyres deliver. The car is a blast to drive.”