DACIA THROUGH THE DESERT
With vast expanses of lifeless, uninhabited, sun-baked sand littered with towering dunes reaching into the cloudless blue sky and unexpected, brutally-rough pockets of boulder-strewn rocky chasms, Romania is . . .
Wait! What? Now just hold on a second, and talk among yourselves, while I do a little Google search.
Ah yes! Best known for producing gypsies and vampires, not to mention a car manufacturer you’ve probably never heard of, Romania will be proudly flying its flag in Saudi Arabia when the 2025 Dakar Rally kicks off.
Sorry about the mix-up, it’s Saudi that has the sand and emptiness that Romania’s largest – Ok, only – vehicle manufacturer wants to tame in what many consider the ultimate motorsport challenge.
Dacia may be a minnow in the world automotive manufacturing pond, but it thinks big and now wants to swim with the sharks. That big thinking involves winning the epic Dakar with a purpose built off-road racer and two of the greatest drivers any team could dream of having in the hot seats.
Purpose-built by the legendary UK competition specialist Prodrive, which has been a winner everywhere from Le Mans to Supercars, Dacia’s high-tech Dakar weapon – the appropriately named Sandrider – will be entrusted to a couple of pretty reasonable steerers for the epic event.
They are five-time Dakar winner Nasser Al-Attiyah, who seems to wins the event for fun, and nine-time world rally champion Sebastien Loeb.
There’s also a third Sandrider for Prodrive’s X44 Extreme-E protege, Cristina Gutierrez.
But, really, can a Romanian car company, hailing from a country where the only sand is on the beaches of its Black Sea resorts, really conquer the vast vehicle destroying wilderness of Saudi Arabia?
Well, in the team’s first and only hit-out before the Dakar, the Rallye du Maroc in Morocco, Al-Attiyah and Loeb finished first and second. Gutierrez was only 78th, but she was running a car with old and abused parts from the Sandrider’s test program to see what would last and what wouldn’t in the big one.
Despite the success in Morocco, the team wants to keep expectations down and not put the cart before the camel.
According to Dacia Sandriders' technical director Philip Dunabin, no-one is even thinking about victory or talking it up before it sees whether it can walk the walk.
“There is not a presumption on Dacia's side that Dacia can come in and win straightaway,” explains Dunabin
The object, he says, is "to do as well as we can".
The thinking is that you’ve got to lose a Dakar before you can win one, and that's a belief Dunabin is not quick to dispel.
"We obviously hope we have speed, what we don't know is you need to do a Dakar to get experience and to know you have the reliability that will take you that distance,” he says.
“So I think to start off, Dacia probably thought we could go and get a run, get experience and whatever."
Still, he admits things look brighter despite high-powered opposition from Ford and Toyota in the Saudi desert.
"Perhaps the expectation has come up a bit because of results in Morocco," he says.
“But there is no obligation that we deliver a winning result straight out. If we do that, it'll be great, but there is no presumption,” he emphasised.
Of course Seb Loeb may be thinking just a little differently. The superstar Frenchman wants a Dakar victory on his impressive CV more than you can imagine. He’s fixated on it and won’t rest easy until he can tick that one last box in a career that is almost without peer.
"Do I want to win the Dakar?,” he asks, almost rhetorically. "Of course, shit yeah."
He has made eight attempts at this most gruelling and demanding of events, finishing second three times and third another two times.
"Close but . . .," he smiles.
So what about the manufacturer you’ve never heard of?
It's been a bargain brand in Europe for more than a decade, and is now part of the Renault empire.
Australian car buyers will be able to buy a Dacia, the small Duster SUV, later this year when it is pitched as a lower-priced entry into an over-crowded market.
It will tackle rivals such as Suzuki but, you still won’t won’t see a Dacia-badged vehicle on Aussie roads.
Instead it will be sold as a Renault, and is likely to become the company’s best seller in Australia.
But if the Dacia Sandrider were to win the Dakar would that prompt a marketing re-think? Perhaps yes and perhaps no, but the badge for Australia will mean nothing to Loeb if he can finally win a Dakar duel.