Dakar soon to witness a wicked $1.6 Million Coupe

Dakar rally is witnessing some really wicked machines. After the debut of Audi’s EV Rally Car, now we will be witnessing some mean $1.6 Million off-roader coupe.

Although they seem unlikely at first, these cars normally generate a few buzzy videos and headlines before fading into obscurity. The all-new Prodrive Hunter appears to be a more serious prospect, or at least it has a more serious history. The Hunter billed as the world’s first all-terrain hypercar, brings Dakar-proven design and engineering to the high-dollar sports car market, allowing even the most inexperienced driver to pilot their fast-paced all-terrain adventure.

Calling Hunter a hypercar is technically wrong as it produces a mere 600 HP. Prodrive may believe it is a hypercar-level performance for an off-roader, but with everyday car and truck makers offering 700-hp trucks and SUVs, 600 horsepower, no matter how wild they run, don’t add up to a hypercar.

It joins a long list of ill-fated off-road sports vehicle concepts and prototypes, like the Audi Nanuk Quattro, Zarooq Sand Racer (and the Laffite G-Tec X-Road that sort of followed), and Camal Ramusa. Please accept our apologies if we missed a few. The Hunter does bring something that none of those past cars did, however: a Dakar pedigree. The new street-legal vehicle is a direct descendent of the Hunter T1+, which Sebastian Loeb, Fabian Lurquin, and the Bahrain Raid Xtreme team drove to a second-place podium finish at Dakar 2022.

Surprisingly, without the constraints of race circuit restrictions, Prodrive has gone even larger with the consumer Hunter. The 3.5-litre twin-turbo V6 engine from the Dakar vehicle is retained, but the 600 horsepower (447 kW) and 516 lb-ft (700 Nm) of torque are increased by 50%. It has a six-speed paddle-shift gearbox for smooth, millisecond-quick changes and a 4WD system that transfers power to all four wheels.

According to Prodrive’s calculations, that power line would be adequate for a sub-four-second 0-62 mph (100 km/h) acceleration and a near-186 mph (300 km/h) peak speed, but it would need putting something faster on the ground than those bulky 35-in off-road tyres. When swimming through sand or manoeuvring over towering boulders, however, buyers will be pleased with the 35s.

The Hunter’s carbon fibre and natural-composite bodywork sit atop a high-tensile steel space frame, and the body is virtually unchanged from the Dakar vehicle, save for the removal of the racing car livery and half-concealed spare side tyres. That’s either a good thing or a terrible thing, depending on what you want — we like the silky smooth Italian bodywork that comes out of Giugiaro’s homes, but the high-riding Hunter with its skid-plate chin should be far more equipped for real-world off-roading. Double wishbones at each wheel with dual adjustable dampers eat up bumps with up to 400 mm (15.7 in) of travel, 50 mm (2 in) more than the Dakar Hunter T1.