when you're racing in your sporty little high powered race car, and a truck pulls up, and then passes you... is it time to throw in the damn towel? That beast ain't going to slow down in terrain your car has trouble with.

Thanks Marcin!

Marcin sent me a full couple of pages on the Paris - Dakar rally.... not the current version in Peru, or where ever, but the original, back in the 80s

In 1982, Rallycross driver Jan de Rooy took part in the Paris-Dakar Rally. So far, he has driven mainly DAFs. Particularly interesting was the DAF 555 Coupe 4WD - a Variomatic gearbox developed for Formula 3 cars, all-wheel drive and the famous Ford BDA engine. All this stuffed into the body of the DAF 55 (the third five in the name came from the FIA Group 5 regulations). It was a real slaughter on the track, but that's not what I'm going to do.

In any case, Jan de Rooy won his class in his debut in the Dakar Rally and had been doing so until 1984, when he said that one engine wasn't enough. He drove a truck with two engines, one to drive the front axle and the other to drive the rear axle. He didn't make it to the finish line

But he was still convinced that there might be something in this idea. Maybe even this something would be enough to win the rally with a truck. Only such a vehicle is heavy and needs power. A lot of power.

The power was taken from two turbocharged diesel engines with a capacity of 11.5 litres each. Both had 500 hp each. As before, one powered the front axle and the other the rear. Everything was enclosed in an aluminium space frame.

Shortly before the finish line, the crew was disqualified. But just a year later, in 1987, TurboTwin II with Jan de Rooy won the truck category without any problems. In addition, he took 11th place in the general classification.

What's next? If the truck category is no longer a challenge, then you have to go higher. In other words, in the general classification. Just more power is needed.

So there were two TurboTwins at the start of the race, marked X1 and X2. The vehicles weighed ten and a half tonnes each. Not necessarily - a much more modern KAMAZ 4326 from 2011, with only one engine weighs 9.5 tons dry and 16 tons ready to race. The cars had cabs from the DAF 95. The X1 was equipped with two 11.5-litre turbodiesels with a total power of 1200 hp. It was driven by Jan de Rooy.The driver of X2 was Theo van de Rijt.

Both machines surprised with their performance during the rally. Not only fans. The famous Ari Vatanen, driving the Peugeot 405 T16, must have been quite surprised when at about 200km/h the truck started to overtake him.  (above video)

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/daf-95-turbotwin-x1-paris%E2%80%93dakar-rally-daf-600-jan-de-rooy-1988.335428/