Mitsubishi Wins 2007 Dakar

Did toyota or nissan win the production car N class?

Its called Badge re-engineering ie. you keep the badge and re-engineer the car

I'm sure the 'unsuspecting locals' would disagree with you somewhat.

Well said mate, so many knocker's ,
we all know you can't go out and buy one! Derrrrrrrr

We all know the Paj that won Dakar isn't your normal production vehicle, but have any of you taken the time to have a look at the Pajero's that won 10 years ago, most of what was in these vehicles filtered their way into the current Pajeros, and thats exactly whet these vehicles are for, the same as F1 cars to help develope better, stronger production vehicles. As for production Yota 100, seems funny when i mentioned a few months back that Pajero have won the Fink for the umteenth time nearly every Tojo owner out there jumped up and down saying non of these vehicle are even a close resemblance of a stock vehicle, and they would have all done it again if a Paj had won the Dakar "production class" Lets see if a Yota or a Neeesan can beat Pickerings Pajero this year in the Finke Desert Race, be about time these far superior vehicles did..... LOL

Ironically Blaze I was the one & only Toyota man that stuck up for you on that thread about Pajero's winning the Finke production class. Everyone else was confused with the Evolution cars :-)) I have even been raising the flag for Mitsubishi the last few weeks singing the praises of the new Triton being the best ute so don't shoot your allies, they're as rare as hens teeth ;-) I still can't believe the silence from the Nissan camp though.........."100 series have gone soft, independant suspension is no good".........where have they all gone now? :-))
Cheers Craig........
HZJ105

Hi Craig,

You will notice I did put "nearly every Tojo owner out there" so I'm all for Allies... LOL As for Neesan owners going quiet, I believe last time I heard of their race wins was Bathurst and the Skylines. hehehehe I agree with some of the other posts, anyone who finishes Dakar needs a medal, when you consider the whole of the Finke event is only equal to one special stage, its hard to comprehend.

Yeah happy that the Pajero's got up again.

The real race for me as a customer though is the production 4x4 race. Toyota all the way and some there.

I certainly wont take anything away from the big boys in their prototype cars & trucks, they certainly were spectacular & put on a great show but to get some sense of what a production car can do & how reliable it is under extreme conditions with modifications anyone can do, I always find it interesting to see how the lesser class's fared.
Putting a company badge on a prototype Dakar car whether it be a Hummer, a Pajero or a BMW M3 would be like putting a Honda Civic badge on an F1 race car...............false advertising. At least VW didn't pretend their's was a Golf or a Beetle :-)
Cheers Craig..........

Hi I a not 100% sure but I think the pajero normally take out the production class as well, the cruiser win was unusual because it is normally one by petrol motors.

Have fun
Craig

I haven't followed this year at all because I have been away where there was no television but I have just done a bit of looking on the web. The VWs are called a Race Touareg according to the entry list so that seems to be the same concept as a Pajero EVO to me :). Since they are outright contenders they would be as highly modified as all the others.

Just saw your other follow up in the e-mail while I was searching and you may be right that they have won the production class before but they always seem to advertise the outright win. I am pretty sure that any Mitsubishi teams in the production class would be privateers. The entry list actually shows 5 diesel Pajeros and a stack of other ones that probably are petrol but it is impossible to tell if they are factory supported. There are also quite a few Toyotas but it is even harder as the list I found doesn't even show if they are diesel let alone what class they run in or if they have factory support. Frankly anyone without factory support who manages to finish a race like that has won as far as I am concerned. To get the first five places if they were privateers is great. Factory supported against privateer wouldn't impress me as much since they can break lots of things and get them fixed by the team where a privateer struggles.

It's like the old days of Bathurst where the cars really were production compared to what they are now where I can't even tell the makes from the front except for the sticker across the top of the windscreen. Some of the rules in this years Dakar enforced some stages without outside servicing allowed in order to even things up but a true test of reliability would have to not allow much in the way of servicing.

All in all good fun though :).

Tim.