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Courtesy of Toyota South Africa
Dakar Revolution
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Courtesy of Toyota South Africa
Dakar Revolution
The new rules for 2WD buggies allow for 37” tires and modified bodywork, as you can see here.
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Courtesy of Toyota South Africa
Dakar Revolution
As you can tell from the rear, there isn’t much Toyota Hilux left in this custom racer.
By Budd Stanley, photos courtesy of Toyota South Africa
There seems to be a changing of the guard in the rugged sport of Rally Raid. Ironically, rally raid vehicles are designed specifically to race across the desert for up to two weeks straight, a task best handled with all four wheels putting power to the ground. However, the once dominant 4WD’s are slowly relinquishing their position as the top spec competition vehicles in the sport.
Until 2016, only three 2WD vehicles have ever won the iconic Dakar rally, a Renault 20 in 1982, and two Schlesser buggies in 1999 and 2000. Other than these three circumstances, 4WD Peugeots, Citroens, Porsches, Mitsubishis, Volkswagens and Minis have dominated the desert classic.
Then came the return of Peugeot in 2015. Instead of building the classic T1 Class 4WD rally raid vehicle like everyone else, Peugeot showed up in Argentina with the 2008 DKR, a 2WD buggy loosely resembling the carmakers production CUV. A year later in 2016, the 2008 DKR would become the first 2WD vehicle to win the Dakar in 16 years.
Fast forward to present and the Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa team (perennial Dakar podium finisher) has just pulled the covers off their latest racing machine, surprising fans by changing the popular Toyota Hilux from a 4WD spec vehicle to 2WD, dubbing the new racer the Hilux EVO.
So, why are international rally raid vehicles ditching 4WD for 2WD? Well, the answer is pretty simple really, the relaxing of the rulebook for the 2WD class has allowed team engineers much more flexibility to build a vehicle that more than makes up for the lack of two extra wheels grabbing at the desert sand.
The 2WD buggy class allows for larger 37” tires, lower weight restrictions, a larger air restrictor on the engine and more freedom in engine placement and suspension geometry. The result, Toyota Gazoo Racing now has a Hilux that weighs in at 1,300 kg, 615 kg lighter than its predecessor. The 5.0L V-8, lifted from the Lexus RC-F, now gets a 38 mm restrictor and is free to be mid-mounted in the chassis between the axles. This improves the vehicles balance and allows for heavier items to be mounted lower in the chassis, improving the vehicles centre of gravity. All good things when you’re leaping from sand dune to sand dune at 160 kmh.
"Essentially, this is our take on what a two-wheel-drive Dakar challenger should be," says Toyota Gazoo Racing SA team principal Glyn Hall. "We've taken all the testing and real-world experience we gained with the four-wheel-drive Toyota Hilux over the past five years and repackaged it in the lighter, faster Toyota Hilux Evo."
Toyota Gazoo Racing will arrive at the starting line of the 2017 Dakar Rally this January with three brand new trucks piloted by team regulars Giniel de Villiers and his navigator Dirk von Zitzewitz, Leeroy Poulter and Rob Howie and new additions Nasser Al-Attiyah and Matthieu Baumel. The Toyota’s will be joined on the start ramp with a growing number of 2WD vehicles headed by the current champions, Peugeot. For the time being, it looks like the 2WD buggies are here to stay.
While the new rules are increasing the performance of teams that may not have the limitless budgets of the top factory teams, the vehicles are becoming noticeably less related to their production equivalents. One of the draws of the Dakar Rally is that the competing vehicles look similar to their production counterparts, however this new class of vehicles are quickly becoming much like the SCORE Baja trucks.
The Dakar Rally commences on January 2th from the city of Asuncion, Paraguay. Competitors will compete over a course of 9,000 km, travelling through Bolivia and finally finishing in Buenos Aires, Argentina on the 14th of January. The route will expose the racers to the driest desert on Earth, the Atacama, and reach altitudes as high as 3,600 m (11,800 ft).