A few months ago, Porsche asked me this: “Would you like to fly to Morocco and drive the new 911 Dakar in the Sahara on some of the course once used for the Paris-Dakar Rally?” Already fascinated by Porsche’s heritage and success with 911s in that epic rally through Europe and North Africa, I answered without hesitation. That you’re reading this story indicates my response. I was about to learn a little about Africa and a lot about the latest 911.
This story originally appeared in Volume 17 of Road & Track.
Some privileged motorsport-grade names—Walter Röhrl, Jacky Ickx—have driven 911s in rallies, from rear-drive variants (on which a Keen Project Safari is modeled) to the beloved 953 and the spectacular 959. Maybe you haven’t heard of the 953—it ran the Paris-Dakar Rally only once, in 1984, with René Metge piloting it to victory. It used the 911’s first experimental four-wheel-drive system, which evolved into the civilian 911 Carrera 4.
Since Morocco’s biggest cities are nowhere near the Sahara, we’re starting in Errachidia. More than 90,000 people live here, but you wouldn’t know that by either flying overhead or passing through its impeccably clean and heavily secured but otherwise spartan airport. It feels like a town a quarter of that size, at most. We’re given delicious local baked goods and fragrant, sweet mint tea. Then, in Dakar 911s with Martini-esque “heritage” livery, we head off, 60 miles south on tarmac toward the deep, radiant orange dunes I’ve seen only in pictures.
The roads we’re traveling are uneven and poorly maintained, except for a few immaculate sections. Most vehicles we see are Japanese and Chinese trucks. I’m warned about aggressive policing and told to adhere to the 100 km/h speed limit, but the only cops we encounter seem more interested in which of our Instagram accounts are worth following, and in one case, they request a demonstration of launch control away from a checkpoint.
As we proceed south, villages built along the fertile banks of a winding river appear and disappear every kilometer or so. Remove the cars, cellphones, and striped tarmac, and the scene could have taken place any time in the past thousand years. More than a mile or two in any direction, civilization simply ends. I wonder how property rights work here. It’s fairly obvious the towns are the result of organized planning, but there are also houses, huts, and tents placed haphazardly all over the desert. Do the residents own the land, or is it just cool to build something wherever you’d like if you’re far enough away from people?
I feel incredibly self-conscious driving a $252,270 candy-striped (well, technically vermouth-striped), meaty-tired sports car past families in sandals lugging the week’s groceries down the road on foot. Kids come running from behind curtains dangling from rudimentary cube homes to wave, attempt to flag us down for money, and take photos on their phones. Men riding donkeys and dromedary camels loaded to the hilt with building materials and merchandise for their shops line the shoulders, trotting along the edge of the desert. Once in a while, someone flips us the bird. I don’t entirely blame them.
Because the 911’s flat-six engine hangs over the rear axle, you have to exit a corner a bit differently from what you’d do in a front- or mid-engine car. If you exit hard on the throttle and get some oversteer, you need to stay on the throttle to keep the weight on the rear. Lifting off the throttle will shift weight abruptly onto the front wheels, and the engine’s mass will act as a pendulum, swinging around hard the other way, looping the car.
On a loose surface, there is no grip to “catch and snap back.” If you get that same oversteer and lift, you lose nearly all the pendulum effect. The car is forgiving in slides, gently transitioning from one direction to the other. My belief in the inherent greatness of the off-road 911 is reinforced over and over.
You don’t need a 911 Dakar and its raised ride height, bespoke off-road Pirelli tires, and skid plates on tarmac anyway. Before I drove one, I’d heard plenty of people talk about these cars like perfect urban runabouts. But a base-model Carrera 4 with the optional nose lift deals with bumpy urban roads and poor weather just fine. You don’t need a Dakar for the city any more than you need a Ford Raptor to drive up a dirt road. Though the Dakar’s longer-travel suspension absorbs the bigger whoops and dips impressively, it’s surprisingly stiff over cracks and smaller bumps in the road.
Turning off the tarmac onto a gravel road across bouldered, desolate badlands, I flip a switch to raise the suspension and set the Dakar to the drift-friendly Rallye mode for rear-biased power distribution. The all-wheel-drive system is programmed in conjunction with the torque vectoring and rear steer to optimize easy, controlled sliding and moving around beyond the limit of grip without unnatural or surprising reactions. All-wheel-drive systems usually create understeer when you apply power at the midcorner or during a slide, while rear-wheel-drive systems typically do the opposite, increasing the angle of the slide on power. The Dakar’s system offers the benefits of all-wheel drive during forward acceleration while eschewing the slide-related drawbacks.
I do a launch-control start, sending rocks and sand into the wheel wells, off the skid plates, and toward the support vehicle behind me. I sail past 60 mph on dirt in about four seconds flat. It’s no trouble maintaining a 70- to 80-mph pace down gravel rally stages, though I stop every few minutes because I can’t see a damn thing thanks to the dust. The Dakar’s engine develops 473 hp. It’s based on the Carrera 4 GTS’s mill, the only modification a reinforced air filter and housing for situations like this.
Fortunately, the legendary Sahara dune sand doesn’t hang in the air. It flies and it falls. This is more like driving in deep snow. But unlike in snow, the car comes to a quick stop if it must. I set the Dakar to Off-Road mode, raising the suspension to maximum height and bringing some of the power back to the front wheels.
The next six minutes produce the biggest shit-eating grin I’ve had in 20 years of professional driving. The dunes are not like a rally stage—there’s room to send it wide without hitting anything. They go up and down, left and right, with extreme camber, blind break-over, and high-g dips, all of which must be taken with a heavy foot on the throttle, sending monstrous orange roostertails 20 feet in the air and all over the hood and windshield when the wheels are cranked. Like all 911s, the Dakar has a very low center of gravity, which comes in handy in circumstances where a Pajero or another regional SUV would feel like it was going to roll over. I go hard up a dune. Halfway up, I throw the wheel left and smash the throttle, surfing the dune like Kelly Slater on a Waikiki wave. In a Dakar, I’m a sideways rock star. I am Walter Röhrl. I am Jacky Ickx. And I want to drive this car the rest of the way across the Sahara.
The 911 Dakar is a special car, and most buyers will protect their investment rather than go dune surfing. By limiting the run to only 2500 vehicles globally, Porsche has all but ensured instant collectibility, and with that comes preciousness that conflicts with the Dakar’s raison d’être. Only the rare few—people who are either wealthy, very bold, or both—will dare to drive this car in the way it was designed to excel.
I can’t will you a quarter-million-dollar budget for a sports car. But, if you can get a Dakar, I beg you to be bold and use it for its intended purpose. Ideally across a vast desert. Ideally in North Africa. Ideally in a place worth learning about.
Matt Farah is a lifelong car enthusiast who began his automotive career at dealerships, rental agencies, and detail shops before discovering the power of YouTube in 2006, with his channel The Smoking Tire. Farah has a Bachelors of Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania, with a concentration in Photography, helping not only create YouTube content but also providing his own photography for his Editor-at-Large position at Road & Track.
He has hosted and produced television series on NBC Sports, G4 Network, SPEED, and Esquire. The Smoking Tire Podcast is #1 in the category every week of the year. Now at 800+ episodes, The Smoking Tire podcast is the definitive guest stop for who’s who in the auto industry. Farah’s Westside Collector Car Storage is a game-changer in luxury, concierge parking that expanded to a second location in 2023.
