The Off-Road Porsche 911 Dakar Is Debuting Next Week

In the mid-Eighties, Porsche entered the 911 in one of the most difficult races in the world—the Paris-Dakar. Its first entrant, the 953, a lifted, all-wheel-drive version of the then-new 911 Carrera 3.2 finished sixth in the 1984 race. In 1985, the 953 evolved into an early version of the 959, with a 3.2-liter naturally aspirated flat-six, though none finished. Nineteen eighty-six saw Porsche triumph at the Paris-Dakar, with a further developed, turbocharged 959. Those Dakar cars have inspired countless "Safari" 911 builds, and Porsche itself.

The company confirmed Wednesday it's building a lifted version of the 911, called the Dakar. The car will make its full debut next week at the Los Angeles Auto Show, and while we'll have to wait until then for full details, we have these pictures of prototypes testing to pore over.

The rooster tails coming off the front wheels show us the car is all-wheel drive. It's lifted over the standard 911, and the prototypes wear off-road tires. The cars testing on rocky trails and in sand dunes appear to have a standard 911 bodyshell with small bolt-on fender flares and some sort of skid plate on the underbody. Interestingly, all these pictures of the car show its deployable spoiler raised.

For the car shown testing in Sweden on ice, there are some differences. There appears to be an opening at the leading edge of the front hood and a small fixed rear wing. The front fascia more resembles that of the 911 Carrera GTS too.'

The 911 Dakar will likely use a version of the 3.0-liter twin-turbo flat-six used throughout the Carrera lineup, though we don't know the state of tune. We also wonder if Dakar buyers will have a choice between manual and dual-clutch transmissions, or just one or the other. The production car won't be nearly as extreme as the portal-axle prototypes Porsche built to climb a nearly 20,000-foot volcano in Chile, but it should offer more than enough capability for its buyers.

We do know this will be popular, though. Porsche 911s of all sorts are incredibly hot right now, and Safari builds are very much in vogue. For its customers, Porsche can hardly do any wrong these days, so demand for the 911 Dakar will be strong.

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