The Dakar Rally is a 15-day, 5,950-mile off-road endurance race for cars, trucks, motorcycles and quads. This year’s route began and ended in Buenos Aires, passing through the Andes and up Chile’s west coast before circling back via Córdoba.

Featured here is Giniel De Villiers’ Volkswagen Race Touareg 2, which won the car race, and a variety of trucks. That class was won by Firdaus Kabirov for Team Kamaz of Russia.

The Race Toureg 2 is a steel space frame, two-door carbon fiber-bodied prototype that shares very little with the production SUV. Power comes for a 260 HP, 443 Lb-Ft 2.5-liter, five-cylinder supercharged Diesel. That may not sound that big, but the overall vehicle weighs just 3,940 Lbs. It has to survive some of the most extreme conditions on earth over the 15-day race, facing temperatures that range from freezing to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, huge impacts, submersion in water and mud as well as powdery sand. This was the Toureg 2’s first race.

For awesome photos of the motorcycles that took part in the 2009 Dakar Rally visit Hell For Leather.

Photography Credit: Red Bull Photofiles

The 2009 race is scheduled to go 6,000 kilometers and run from Jan 3rd to the 18th, beginning and ending in Buenos Aires and running through both Argentina and Chile. Details on the route are thin, but the 2009 Dakar site is already up and running. Lobbying for tickets to South America has already begun in earnest, with Wert mentioning something about budgets and overlords. [Central European Details via Sportbusiness] [South American Rally via Dakar Website"</>]

The Amaury Sport Association really had no choice but to cancel, considering the danger to both the racers and spectators even after Mauritania had offered up a 3,000 man security force. No word on the possibility of a rescheduled race when things calm down or whether the race will be scrapped altogether. Nobody doubts that safety needs to come first, but we'd wager there are a lot of racers with long faces today.
[Associated Press]
[Telegraph.co.uk]
[CBC News]

We have but two things to say. Number one, our new goal in life is to hammer on a 959. And we mean it – literally hammer. Number two, this video could have been several hundred minutes longer. All hail the 959. Make the jump to hear some nice engine noise. – Jonny Lieberman

Related:
Whoa! 959 On eBay! [Internal]

Dakar rally trucks never cease to amaze us. Neither do vehicles from the former Soviet Bloc. In that spirit, we present to you footage that involuntarily made us giggle. Seeing a beefcake brick drift a dirt-road corner like that indicates the driver's testes must sport an atomic number somewhere in the transuranic range. That said, given the rigors of Dakar, we're not entirely sure their half-life is exactly within the realm of accurate prediction. Oh, and avoid the soundtrack of this vid. Pick a song of your choice with a high BPM quotient, mute the clip and enjoy. We recommend Black Flag's Nervous Breakdown. Or something by Boyzone. Anything but this. – Davey G. Johnson

Related:
Double-Radder Than Anything You Could Possibly Imagine: The DAF Turbo Twin II!!! [Internal]

Last month, St phane Peterhansel, Cyril Despres and Hans Stacey cemented their status as legends with victory in arguably the scariest, most hardcore event in the world, and yet their wins on an event simply known as The Dakar barely registered a blip on the news. When a ChampCar driver next complains about a bump in mid-corner, he might want to consider being shot at by Algerian rebels intent on theft and kidnap, lions waiting in the pit lane or even cresting a hill to find the shifting road surface has left a 40-foot drop on the other side. These men are heroes.

Yet the biggest headline grabs from a monumental tale of human achievement were good ol' boy Jeff Robby Gordon winning a stage in the Hummer and the Vatican wading in after the tragic death of South African biker Elmer Symonsand to call the event: "A Bloody Race of Irresponsibility."

These are strong words, normally reserved for pop stars grinding against religious icons in a bid to shift a few more plastic discs. Of course lots of people watch motorsport for the crashes in the first place, the Dakar has some monsters and the Vatican's comments may have doubled the audience. The organizers were probably privately thankful for the divine intervention, but the Dakar deserves a worldwide audience anyway.

There are shunts, but the length and nature of the event that was originally the Paris-Dakar means it's far more than a barrel-rolling, fireball of an accident waiting to happen: it's an emotional journey.

This year's event started in Portugal, making a nonsense of the name, and went through Spain, Morocco, Mauritania, Mali and Senegal. Travel writers could turn this into a year-long odyssey, but these guys did it in two weeks, against the clock, with just a compass and a map for guidance. The bikers are even more impressive; at least the cars come with a co-driver to share the load.

Sound boring? You're wrong, just imagine trying to negotiate your way through the desert, remote towns populated with heavy wildlife and forests at high speed. And imagine watching the leader of the bikes with the fate-tempting name of Marc Coma and sharing his desperation. He went 6 km off route in the final hour after leading most of the rally and, in his haste to get back, hit an immovable object and literally flipped out of the event.

It was classic, nailbiting sporting drama with a two-week event coming down to vital seconds and minutes before a competitor finally caved in to the pressure.

Despres' took his second victory aboard the near unbeatable KTM, which is spoken of in hushed tones among bikers due to its endurance record, yet the drawing of a track car it recently released have probably earned the Austrian manufacturer more kudos around the world.

Peterhansel, meanwhile, took Mitsubishi's seventh consecutive win by less than eight minutes after 46 hours of timed stages at a time when most fans of the marque are still using former glories in the World Rally Championship to demonstrate its dominance.

There were other stellar stories, too, like the works Fiat team taking on the desert in the near-ridiculous looking Panda 4x4, drivers forced to come up with impromptu fixes for problems that would have our cars trailered from the roadside and just 300 finishing from a starting lineup of almost 600.

And it all takes place against some the kind of cinematic backdrops that would make Ridley Scott cry tears of pure joy, with stunning helicopter shots of cars, trucks and bikes riding dunes like ocean waves, pelting along gravel roads and soaring through the air like they had wings.

It's magical TV and, if you can tune in, you really should. If only for the monster crashes... – Nick Hall

We're rue to post this clip as the weirdo editing almost makes it a snuff film, but the mind-boggling majestic-ness of the 2,400hp twin-engined DAF over-taking a Peugeot 205 in open-desert trumps all niggling concerns. Seriously, imagine you are an eleven-year-old Bedouin girl tending to the camels when suddenly one of these massive motherfuckers jumps the dune, belching black smoke. I mean... totally fricking amazing. Watch with respect. Apologies in advance for the crap 80s soundtrack. [Thanks to pollux111 for the tip] – Jonny Lieberman

Related:
Double-Radder Than Anything You Could Possibly Imagine: The DAF Turbo Twin II!!! [Internal]

Watching this clip, replete with melodramatic Ibanez-woodla-ballad guitar, one might get the impression that it's amateur hour out at the Imperial Dunes in eastern SoCal. But it's not. These riders are some of the best in the world, and they were out in the African desert a year ago during stage eight of the Dakar Rally. If this doesn't illustrate how tough the conditions can be out there, nothing will. And again, we apologize for the six-string wankery. We had no control over that aspect of the clip. – Davey G. Johnson

Related:
Fiat Panda Off to Dakar [Internal]

We dig minicars. We also dig Italian cars. And we dig the Dakar Rally very much. Fiat, knowing this, has decided to enter two 4x4 Pandas in the Dakar Rally. They turned the diminutive hatch into a panel van, filled it full of goodies helpful for survival in the desert, and left the 105-horse 1.3L turbodiesel alone. We're interested to see how it fares. The understressed motor should be reliable in the desert, but raw speed won't exactly be the car's forte. An interesting entry in a race chock full of interesting entries. – Davey G. Johnson

Fiat Panda Heads to Morocco [The Car Connection]

Related:
Some Dakarness [Internal]

With the flag due to drop on the Dakar Rally on the 6th, we thought we'd whet your appetite for what is surely one of the most badass automotive events ever invented. Below the jump is a musically-soundtracked video that's all trucks. And yes, Loverman, rest easy, as DAF is represented.

Note, this song contains a bad word in the chorus. Punk rockers say bad words. – Davey G. Johnson

Related:
Double-Radder Than Anything You Could Possibly Imagine: The DAF Turbo Twin II!!! [Internal]

Former Japanese F-1 driver to race Dakar rally on 'tempura oil' [PlanetSave]

Related:
Tripping The Ethanol Fantastic: Mark Pike's Corny Cross-Country Ride; Report: Corn, Soybeans? Not So Much, Scientists Bullish On Other Biofuel Supplies [internal]

Seeing as it's already Day 4 of the Dakar Rally and we've been lax in posting about the goings on over on the Portugal-Senegal run, we thought we'd toss out a link to Hog Wild Racing's blog. Scott Whitney and Duane McDowell are a couple of Southern California sidecar racers who have put together something that's a bit more than a KTM or a Beemer with a sidehack strapped to it. Their machine, which has won at Pikes Peak, is powered by a water-cooled Harley motor out of V-Rod. Which sounds Andy Dick-nuts, but it apparently works. [Thanks to Denis for the tip.]

Hog Wild News

Related:
Dakar Rally to Start from Lisbon, Feature Speed Limits [Internal]

Forget fireworks and champagne-goggling subpar members of the opposite sex this New Year's. Instead, why not spend it bombing across Europe and North Africa in the Paris-Dakar Rally? The race, which begins New Year's Eve and continues through January 15th starts in Lisbon, Portugal this year for the first time. Also new on the docket are rules limiting GPS-related navigational tactics and a 150 kph speed limit for bikes and tricks, imposed after two motorcyclists died last year. 508 teams will make the intercontinental run this year, which we feel is criminally underreported here in the US. After all, wouldn't you rather watch off-season NASCAR coverage?

Dakar Rally to start from Lisbon for first time [Reuters]

Related:
Dakar Rally: The Most Dangerous Sporting Event in the World [Internal]