Porsche have just announced the arrival of the 911 Dakar, a variant of the supremely iconic two-door sports car, but with one major change. This one can go off-road.
Porsche has confirmed the 911 Dakar will be coming to Australia, although with only 2500 of them being made available worldwide, we imagine only a small number will make their way Down Under.
For those who do manage to get their hands on one when they arrive in Australia – delivered are expected in the second half of 2023 – you’ll have to pay $491,400, before on-road costs.
An optional Rally Design Package will be made available too, for an extra $54,730. This package gives the 911 Dakar a new two-tone white and blue paint job with red and gold stripes, paying homage to the 911 that won the Paris-Dakar in 1984.
Power is on par with the Carrera GTS, and is confirmed to come from a 3.0-litre twin-turbo flat-six, producing 353kW of power and 570Nm of torque. Porsche claim the 911 Dakar will make it to 100km/h in 3.4-seconds.
Porsche’s new trail road chomper is named after the former Paris-Dakar Rally (now simply known as the Dakar Rally), which Porsche won for the first time in its history in 1984, with the Porsche 953 (a heavily modified version of the 911 built specifically for the rally event).
That car was the first Porsche to receive an all-wheel-drive system, which eventually became a staple of Porsche’s for years to come.
Porsche says their latest creation is “the first two-door sports car to offer off-road capabilities,” and after seeing pictures of where it has been tested, it certainly seems capable.
According to Porsche, the 911 Dakar has been driven more than half a million kilometres during testing, with 10,000 kilometres of this specifically being off-road. Chief among its features that enable it to be used in more demanding conditions, the 911 Dakar sits 50mm taller than a regular Carrera by default, and can be raised a further 30mm if needed.
In a nice hark back, much of the testing occurred in the south of France at the Château de Lastours test track, where a number of rally teams test their car prior to the Dakar rally.
Wanting to understand how well the off-road trail chomper performed in the cold, Porsche also tested their car on snow and frozen lakes in Sweden as well as off of 50-metre-high dunes in the deserts of Dubai and Morocco.
Porsche works driver Romain Dumas had high praise for the vehicle, saying, “I knew what a 911 could do on the road, but I was absolutely stunned by how well the car performed here on the loose.”
While it’s certainly a sight to behold, a standard-looking Porsche 911 (albeit slightly raised) tearing up sand dunes and snow-covered roadways, Porsche actually seems to be a little late to the ‘Safari’ car trend that proved to be especially popular in Australia during the pandemic. ‘Safari-ing’ your car means to turn a car that was never designed to go off-road, into something that is more than at home tearing up some trails.
Other features of the Dakar that tie-in with the Safari trend include a new rear wing red aluminium towing hooks, a wider body and an external 12V outlet on the roof for plugging in the headlights of the optional roof rack. The roof rack, by the way, can take up to 42kgs of weight, and there will even be an optional rooftop tent available to attach to it, so you can genuinely spend days away in the outback, all while in the comfort of a Porsche 911.
You’ll have to take just yourself and one other person, however, as there are no rear seats. Cars delivered to Australia will also get an air compressor and tyre sealant as standard.
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