First Drive: Porsche 911 Dakar 2023 review

In 1979, multiple Grand Prix and F1 winner Jacky Ickx had an epiphany. Looking for a third act to his career after his time in single-seaters and sportscars, he chanced across the then brand-new Paris-Dakar Rally. He entered the event in a Citroen CX in 1981 and drove across Africa for three weeks only to crash out almost within sight of the finishing line. But it scarcely mattered: by then he’d fallen in love with the event, the people he met and the places through which he passed. Today he freely admits he became a changed man.

He won outright in 1983 in a Mercedes-Benz G-wagon and, suitably emboldened, approached Porsche with an idea to prepare three 911s for the 1984 event while the company’s intended Group B competitor, the 959, went through a protracted and painful gestation.

The result was the Porsche 953, the first all-wheel drive 911 with such refinements as double-wishbone front suspension (which wouldn’t find its way onto a street 911 until the GT3 of 2021), massive ground clearance and two fuel tanks with a combined capacity of 270 litres. Three cars were entered, one of which driven by French rally star René Metge won outright. Ickx was less lucky, his electrics burning out early on and while he did rejoin hours later in 139^th place, by the finish he’d only been able to battle back to sixth place. Even so, he did take five stage wins – more than anyone else – including four in a row. What mattered most was that a factory Porsche had won an international rally for the first time since the 911’s hat-trick of wins o the Monte Carlo rally came to an end in 1970.

And without that win nearly 40 years ago, you’d not be reading these words nor looking at this car now.

But to recall and honour that victory – not to mention fill its pockets – Porsche has created the new 911 Dakar. At £173,000 it costs almost twice what you’d pay for a basic Carrera, not that this has stopped prospects hammering on dealer doors to get one. Porsche is limiting production to 2,500 units and saving China’s allocation (where the order book has yet to open) they’re all gone. Many will doubtless be ‘flipped’ and sold on, and given the ‘Roughroads’ (read Rothmans) livery adds a further £18,434 to the price all by itself, asking prices for delivery miles cars are bound to begin with a ‘2’, and then some. 

Porsche could probably have simply produced the decals and left the rest of the car as standard and still sold all the 911 Dakars it wanted, such is the power of appearances. But Porsche, being Porsche, wanted the function to at least match the form. Of which more in a minute.

For now, you should know that customers can choose to spec their Dakar in silver, black, white, grey or blue or, for that additional £18,434 the 1984 Dakar-rally inspired ‘Rallye Design Package’. In addition, three further decal sets are available, reprising the look of the 911s that took part in the East African Safari Rally in 1971, 1974 and 1978. The Martini colours look best, at least to these eyes, but perhaps owners should think hard before committing to a paint scheme that will attract enormous attention wherever it goes, whether its owner wants it or not. Then again, for many, and maybe even most, that will be the reason for buying the car in the first place. Evidence of this can be found in the fact that so far fully 70 per cent of cars ordered will be delivered in Roughroads livery.

But it’s not just a paint job, not by a very long way. There are fundamental changes here too, not to the 473bhp flat-six engine or the four-wheel drive system sourced from the Carrera 4 GTS upon which the Dakar is based (regrettably no manual is available), but to almost all elements of the chassis.

Fundamentally the car sits 50mm higher than a GTS, which can be raised to 80mm for serious off-roading. Spring rates have been halved and unique twin carcass Pirelli Scorpion tyres developed to provide maximum grip and puncture resistance in the worst imaginable conditions. Their tall sidewalls mean the wheel diameters have dropped by an inch at both ends, so GTS brakes won’t fit, nor will carbon ceramics. So the discs from the Carrera S are used and as the limitations of the tyres also mandate a 149mph speed limiter, they more than suffice. Full underbody protection is provided and the front radiator deleted (while those at the side are from the Turbo to compensate) to improve approach angles. The rear spoiler is unique to the Dakar too.

Needless to say, this is a 911 that will go places no previous street 911 could imagine. More than that, the combination of its low weight, exceptionally low centre of gravity, the immense traction advantage all 911s have always enjoyed thanks to their unorthodox engine location and those purpose-built Scorpion tyres means it possesses talents most purpose-built SUVs would crawl over broken glass to have. With a power-to-weight ratio similar to that of the most powerful SUVs in the world – think Aston DBX707 and Cayenne Turbo GT Coupe – but carrying half a tonne less weight (at least), you can attack obstacles such as 100ft high sand dunes with the vigour you just won’t find anywhere else. Even if the challenge looks frankly absurd, almost all the time you just need to keep your foot planted and leave it to the engine and all that traction to do the rest.

Better, when you reach the top or have to turn round, instead of that stomach-clenching fear experienced in other SUVs when traversing steep slopes that you might find yourself tumbling all the way down to the bottom, you’d need to try to park the Dakar on a wall of death before it fell over. It doesn’t matter how many conventional SUVs you’ve driven, nor the conditions in which you’ve driven them, it’s hard indeed to imagine one more confidence-inspiring than this. And with all that ground clearance it’s at least as capable as most of clambering over things. Also, you won’t find another SUV with a Rallye mode that encourages you to see how much oversteer you can generate on a loose surface, to which the answer is as much as you like.

But there is a downside, far beyond the scarcely inconvenient fact that the Scorpions mean the top speed has been pegged back to 149mph, or 110mph with the suspension raised. And it has to be said that however good the 911 Dakar is in the Sahara desert – and it is phenomenally, at times bewilderingly good – almost all of the 2500 cars will spend almost all the miles they accrue on the public road, an environment for which those tyres are far less suited. Despite the softened suspension those stiff-walled tyres introduce an element of harshness into the ride, the steering is slightly less precise and naturally grip levels are significantly compromised. It would have been extremely interesting to drive the 911 Dakar on the summer and winter tyres which have also been specially developed for it. For all the off-road heroics afforded by the Scorpions, something a bit more conventional might very well prove a smarter choice.

With the drama of the exterior and that driving experience, the interior of the Dakar is determinedly and perhaps slightly disappointingly understated. Yes, you’re not going to mistake it for a standard 992 – the absent rear seats will see to that – and you can make it look a whole lot racier if you spec the optional roll cage that sits behind the front seats, but there’s not much that really shouts Dakar rally at you. Then again, nor was there in the original Porsche 953. Save race seats, harnesses, some primitive navigation equipment and supplementary fuel gauge for the extra tank in the back, the cockpit is pure early 1980s 911 right down to its cigarette lighter socket.

In the modern car, comfortably upholstered bucket seats are standard, there’s a strip of green Race-Tex fabric at 12 o’clock on the steering wheel for when you’re so sideways you’ve forgotten where straight ahead is while the same fabric is used for the centre of the seat backs. There are 911 Dakar logos on the dash and kickplates and you can option door projectors which shine the logo on the ground when they’re opened. There’s a brushed aluminium gear selector, the individual build number of your car, and that’s about it.

If the above is not enough to convince you that Porsche is serious about this car, even if most customers will likely treat them as toys, be advised it has developed two all-new driving modes, specifically for when the tarmac turns to gravel, mud, sand or snow. They affect engine response, gearshift speed and timing, stability system setting and, most important of all, torque distribution.

The first is simply called ‘off road’ mode and, like all the others, is simply dialled up on the steering wheel-mounted rotary controller. This automatically raises the car to its maximum 80mm ride height (you can do it manually on a button too. It also defaults to a 50/50 front-to-rear torque split though, of course, it remains infinitely variable in practice. Summon ‘Rallye’ mode instead and it’ll conclude you’d like to pass the time going sideways, so will shuttle a baseline 75 per cent of the torque to the rear wheels and sideways you shall go. There’s even a specially developed off-road launch control setting.

Additional devices usually found on only on the options list of a C4 GTS include active anti-roll bars and four-wheel steering. Meanwhile, the CFRP bonnet is borrowed from the GT3, as is its lightweight battery and rear seat deletion. Other options and accessories include all the usual 911 refinements you’d expect and quite a few you might not, including a tent, spades, sand ladders, water canteen and a 12V power socket mounted on the roof.

On first acquaintance, you’d say the Dakar was just a toy for the very rich, one of a number of cars in a stable whose primary purpose is to draw attention to its owner. There just aren’t that many deserts in the world in which you can go and play, even fewer in which someone who’s just spent the best part of £200,000 on a car might choose to. So it would be understandable were the car categorised and dismissed as such.

But there is another, far more relevant role it seems born to play, none of which required you to have a few million square miles of arid nothingness on your doorstep before you can use it. It can only be imagined because it’s not yet been driven in this form, but a Dakar in a single, sober colour without the Scorpions but with a set of summer and winter tyres might just be the most versatile version of what has always been the world’s most versatile sports car. No need to fire up the Land Rover when the snow comes, or if you live at the end of a steep, rutted track, just take the Dakar instead. At this point, an occasional toy transforms into the most enjoyable all-purpose vehicle you can buy. And for all its extraordinary offroad ability, it is that rather less exciting but far more useful role to which the 911 Dakar seems born.