What's The Most Badass Racing Truck Of All Time?

Watching an F1 car devour Eau Rouge, it's easy to forget racing was born from utility vehicles. It was farmers pitting their horse-drawn implements against each other for agri-bragging rights. Sure, we still have tractor pulls, but what about their larger, road-going cousins. What's the most badass racing truck of all time?

It's the 1988 DAF 95 Turbotwin X1. After winning the 1987 Paris-Dakar rally with its 1,000+ hp "Turbotwin II," the Dutch truckmaker (and Dakar-trucking mastermind and driver Jan de Rooy) returned in 1988 with the gorillashit-insane X1. How do you make an 11-ton truck go 150 mph? Two 11.6-liter diesel engines, each fed by three turbochargers, producing 1,200 horsepower and a space-time-ripping 3,466 lb-ft of torque. EACH. That's 2,400 hp and near-as-dirt 7,000 lb-ft. It also had a lightweight aluminum spaceframe, which counteracted the weight of all that mid-mounted diesel powah.

Sadly, one of DAF's two competing trucks went into a 100-mph somersault during the 7th stage of the 1988 Paris-Dakar Rally. The subsequent crash killed co-driver Kees Van Loevezijn. After that, DAF Trucks withdrew from Dakar competition.

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