MOTORSPORT MOMENT
With the Dakar moving to its third chapter (and continent) we look back at the early days and the manufacturer that dominated the Sahara
We look back at the days the Dakar was held in Africa
WE ALL KNOW MITSUBISHI DOESN’T do massive volumes with its passenger cars, but there were two things the Japanese manufacturer was seriously good at – putting all their technical know-how into motorsport, and winning. We all know of the Lancer in the WRC (and the Cedia in the INRC) but consigned to the history books is one of the biggest challenges they undertook – conquering the original Paris-Dakar. The Dakar through Africa was the adventure of a lifetime, for bikes, trucks and for the cars. While Mitsubishi only won the manufacturer’s title once in the World Rally Championship (in 1998 with the EVO V; Tommi Makinen took four driver’s championships from 1996 to 1999) this was no match for the kind of success the Mitsubishi Ralliart team had at the Dakar, at a time when the rally literally defined the word ‘cross-country’.
Mitsubishi has over 25 years of experience at the Dakar, and has won the rally 12 times making it the most successful manufacturer in the car class. However, it started building its own rally-raid machinery only post 1983, prior to which the cars were built by Sonauto. Come 1985, Mitsubishi built its own rally-raid machine with a tube chassis, double wishbone suspension and a turbocharged 2.6-litre, 218bhp, 4G54 motor placed slightly behind the front axle for better handling in the deep sand trails. The team came to be known as Sonauto Mitsubishi.
The French team of Patrick Zaniroli and Jean Da Silva, piloting a Pajero, got Mitsubishi its maiden victory in the seventh edition of the Paris-Dakar rally in 1985. Unlike the modern day Dakar, the rally was much more treacherous in the past – in fact the 1985 Dakar was said to be the most challenging of the 42 editions, as competitors had more than 14,000km to cover from Paris to Dakar, through Algeria. It was five years before the team returned to the Dakar podium. By 1991 the modified road cars had been replaced by prototype vehicles and Mitsubishi Ralliart, with Japanese legend Kenjiro Shinozuka (who also drove a Pajero in the Himalayan Rally and commented you do not need seat belts but a parachute!), took on the might of WRC champion Ari Vatanen in the near-Group B-spec Citroen ZX to finish second. And from then on, there was no looking back.
Mitsubishi’s winning streak started in 1992, where the Dakar ran for close to 13,000km from Paris to Cape Town in South Africa. French racing driver Hubert Auriol, who began his motor racing career with motocross and enduro, started his Dakar journey on a bike before switching to a car in 1988. With codriver Philippe Monnet, he piloted the Pajero Evolution to Mitsubishi’s second victory after a six-year gap. Two-time WRC champion Bruno Saby brought years of rallying experience with him to put the Mitsubishi Pajero on top in the following year too.
Trails to success
The next three years were dominated by Citroen. French rally driver Pierre Lartigue charged ahead of Mitsubishi’s seven-car strong team to win the 1994 rally. Citroen gave a tough fight, taking the top two spots with Philippe Wambergue completing the podium in a Bourgo Buggy putting Mitsubishi’s Hiroshi Masuoka in fourth. 1995 marked the rally’s first start outside of France in Granada, Spain. Mitsubishi made progress, finishing second behind the winning Citroen. Saby, driving one of the Pajero T3 Proto 4x4s, had a huge scare when the car flipped but landed straight on its wheels. Uninjured, the duo headed straight for the finish in Dakar in Senegal. Saby’s teammate Jean-Pierre Fontenay drove the #206 Mitsubishi to the third spot on the podium.
Mitsubishi’s dominance continued, or we could say evolved, in 1997 when they developed a new Pajero Evolution. This rally ran, for the first time, exclusively in Africa. The change in rules didn’t impress Citroen, who withdrew from the event. The withdrawal of Citroen and the new car was the catapult to successive wins in the toughest motorsport event on the globe. Shinozuka took advantage of the situation, pinning the team’s fourth victory, also becoming the first non-European driver to win the rally. In 1998, Jean-Pierre took another win for Mitsubishi in the cars class. Over the next two years, Jean-Louis Schlesser’s Dakar buggy, co-developed by Renault, pushed the Mitsubishi from the top spot, his driving and the buggy’s extreme capabilities waging an allout war on the Mitsubishi and Nissan crews.
From Paris to Dakar for the last time
The 23rd edition (2001) of the Dakar rally was the last time the rally started in Paris and ended in Dakar. Schlesser was on his way to his third Dakar victory, when he was slapped with an hour’s penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct, putting second-placed Jutta Kleinschmidt in the Pajero in the top spot and making her the first woman to win at the Dakar. The next year marked the maiden win for Mitsubishi’s Hiroshi Masuoka, who had been competing for the team for 22 years, went on to win again in 2003.
The 2003 rally started from Marseille, France and culminated at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt. The terrain featured long, tiresome stages with the added burden of harsh terrain. Shinozuka who won the rally for Mitsubishi six years prior, crashed out during his passage through Libya. Stephane Peterhansel who had just moved on from bikes and was yet to become Mr Dakar took an early lead for the team but retired due to mechanical problems leaving teammate Masuoka to take the win.
From here on, Mitsubishi went on to win the Dakar four more times, back-to-back, with Peterhansel behind the wheel of the winning cars in 2004 and 2005. Of course there was competition and the biggest appeared in the form of Volkswagen’s factory outfit while there were Ford-powered buggies and X-Raid tuned BMWs. Mitsubishi Ralliart’s last full factory effort went into defending their title until 2007 after which the rally was cancelled in 2008 due to terrorist scares. In 2009 Volkswagen introduced the diesel Touareg, ushering in a new era in Rally Raids, an era in which Ralliart couldn’t keep pace with petrol power. The poor showing in 2009 with the Pajero/Montero, now re-branded Lancer and running an SUV-Coupe body style along with the Evo X’s grille slapped on the nose, was the last time a full-works Mitsubishi Ralliart competed in the Dakar, bringing down the curtains on a fantastic motorsport career.
The glory years for Mitsubishi’s road car business coincided neatly with the glory years of their Ralliart motorsport operation. Lancer and Evo road cars sold on the back of Makinen’s WRC triumphs while Dakar and other Rally Raid championships established the Pajero/Montero at the top of the 4x4 pyramid. In fact Mitsubishi dealerships in India made a big deal of the Dakar wins with massive posters of Pajeros storming the African dunes adorning their walls, and once the plug was pulled on Ralliart’s operations road car, SUV sales too tanked. No wins on Sunday meant no sales on Monday.
LANCER AND EVOS SOLD ON THE BACK OF MAKINEN’S WRC TRIUMPHS