Dakar Classic
First classic version of the iconic rally sees unusual Sunhill triumph
The epic Dakar Rally – run through Saudi Arabia this year – added a classic category to its existing roster of production cars, prototypes, motorcycles and trucks for the first time in its history. Entrants from as far afield as the US, Spain and Czechia restored cars for the gruelling event, many of whom were veterans of original Paris-dakar Rallies.
Peugeot 504 pick-up
A road-car-based entry in the spirit of the first Paris-dakar Rally, the Peugeot 504 pick-up of the Italian driver/navigator team of Roberto Camporese and Umberto Fiori was intended to be as low-cost as possible. Camporese said, ‘It was our desire to experience this adventure the old-fashioned way. I paid €1200 (£1060) for our 1982 Peugeot. It has a 70bhp engine and two-wheel drive, and we chose the pickup version of the 504 so we could carry all our spare parts with us – we don’t have a support vehicle.’ Camporese and Fiori benefitted from an uphill tow from the organisers’ sweeper truck at one point however.
Camporese said, ‘We’ve restored every aspect of the 504 since we bought it in October 2020 but kept it all-original in the spirit of the first Dakar Rallies. It will be tough; almost all other vehicles on the rally will be capable of out-performing this wreck, and the truth is that we will have already won even if it just lasts one day, because preparing and starting a rally like this in a €1200 vehicle in just two months is already a victory.’
The Peugeot didn’t just finish the rally in the end – it beat Dakar veteran Ignacio Corcuera’s Volkswagen Iltis. An ecstatic Fiori said, ‘The Dakar is like a blender – it swallows you as soon as you enter it. You leave the start line and have no more time to think about it, until in the end it spits you out on the ground and you think, “Damn, what a great thing I’ve done!”.’
Sunhill Buggies
One of a two-car team of these distinctive French desert-rally specialist machines, restored especially for the event, won the 2021 Dakar Classic. Yves Sunhill had been a competitor on the very first
Paris-dakar Rally in 1979 in one of his self-built Vwpowered buggies, though he had to abandon his rally in Niger after a heat exchanger cracked.
The 1979 Sunhill that won the 2021 event was found, appropriately enough, in Niger, where its French ex-pat owner exhibited it at rally events but didn’t drive it. Dakarian rally driver Marc Douton restored it especially for the rally and plans to later rebuild it with electric power.
Douton’s Sunhill was joined in ‘Team Sunhill’ by restorer Frédéric Verdaguer, who rebuilt the ex-hervé Cotel/claude Corbetta Sunhill Buggy that contested the 1982 Paris-dakar, finishing 45th. Verdaguer entered the rally with his wife Julie, who said that just finishing the rally ‘would be the best possible tribute to Yves Sunhill’. In the end, the Verdaguer car came fifth out of the 23 finishers. Furniture designer Yves Sunhill, who died in 2012, is credited with introducing the beach-buggy concept to France after importing a Californian example for actor Peter O’toole. However, Sunhill evolved the concept beyond a mere fun car by entering African desert rallies, ultimately winning the two-wheel