{"id":7018,"date":"2015-01-20T15:36:56","date_gmt":"2015-01-20T15:36:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/?p=7018"},"modified":"2015-01-22T14:51:48","modified_gmt":"2015-01-22T14:51:48","slug":"were-there-any-vans-in-the-2015-dakar-rally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/7018","title":{"rendered":"Were there any vans in the 2015 Dakar Rally?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Dakar rally includes four classes of vehicles — motorbike, quad bikes, cars and trucks. For\u00a0Dakar purposes, the car class includes all vehicles weighing less than 3,500kg, while the truck class is for vehicles weighing\u00a0more than 3,500kg.<\/p>\n

As it happens, there were not any actual vans models in the\u00a0Dakar this year, but\u00a0a number of interesting\u00a0vehicles derived from\u00a0pick-ups, trucks and\u00a0even vans make it into the rally each year. In this article I’ve highlighted a few examples of each category — access to official Dakar photography is limited so these are pictures provided by the manufacturers concerned.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, Toyota put on a strong show, with both Hilux and Land Cruiser entries.\u00a0The Toyota Imperial Hilux\u00a0finished second in the car class:<\/p>\n

\"Dakar

Dakar 2015 Toyota Imperial Hilux<\/p><\/div>\n

Meanwhile — perhaps even more impressively — the Toyota Land Cruiser\u00a0dominated the production 4×4 diesel class, occupying the top 5 slots in the rankings!<\/p>\n

\"Dakar

The Toyota Land Cruiser finished occupied the top five positions in the diesel production 4×4 class!<\/p><\/div>\n

The MINI isn’t\u00a0exactly a\u00a0commercial vehicle, but there was a Clubvan model<\/a> for a short while (now sadly discontinued). Plus, a MINI won has won the Dakar for the last two years.\u00a0Here’s the latest\u00a0Dakar MINI in action (not the winner,\u00a0I don’t think):<\/p>\n

\"Dakar

The 2015 Dakar MINI<\/p><\/div>\n

Iveco is one of the stalwarts of the Dakar truck class, and this year was no exception, with the Italian\u00a0manufacturer entering\u00a0three vehicles in partnership with the Dutch Iveco DeRooy Petronas team.<\/p>\n

The models chosen\u00a0were the Powerstar — a bonneted truck model that’s not sold in the UK — and the Trakker, which is a quarry\/off-road model that is available in the UK, albeit not that commonly seen:<\/p>\n

\"Dakar

The 2015 Dakar Iveco Powerstar, driven by 2012 Dakar winner Gerard de Rooy<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Dakar

The 2015 Dakar Iveco Trakker — you may see one of these down your local quarry…<\/p><\/div>\n

Here are a few more\u00a0Dakar 2015 truck pics, courtesy of the Iveco Flickr feed<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"Desert<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Spirit<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Ranking<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Driver<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Finally, it’s also not a van — but the previous model was available as a van.\u00a0Peugeot discontinued the 207 Van model when the 207 was replaced, but the\u00a0firm’s\u00a0return to the Dakar is worthy of note, especially as the Dakar-spec 2008 is a truly awesome machine, powered by a 3-litre V6 diesel engine mounted at the rear of the car,\u00a0which delivers 340hp and 800Nm of torque — truly in the same spirit as the all-conquering 205 T16 of yesteryear (showing my age, here):<\/p>\n

\"Dakar

The Peugeot 208 as entered into the 2015 Dakar<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A selection of commercial vehicle highlights from the 2015 Dakar rally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[1893],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7018"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7018"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7035,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7018\/revisions\/7035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}