In one respect at least, the Porsche 911 Dakar is a ludicrous car: at near enough double the price of a standard Carrera, it is wincingly expensive. Its new Pirelli tyres create significant levels of road noise, compromising its refinement, the missing rear seats doing the same for its people carrying ability.
It’s less accelerative than the Carrera 4 GTS from which it is derived and Porsche is not even going to publish a Nürburgring lap time because it would likely be unflattering to say the least, and not just because its top speed is limited to 149mph. Which, by the way, makes it the slowest 911 since, well, I’m not sure but certainly in the last 40 years.
But worse than all that, you might think, is that it is a car designed for a purpose to which it will never be put. Tell me, if you had just spent an absolute bare minimum of £173,000 on a Porsche 911 (financially this is GT3 RS territory), would you go and fling it along a gravel path, stones spraying in all directions or, should you be lucky enough to live in such a part of the world, launch it over the top of some mighty sand dune? Me neither.
