Saturday, January 5th, 2008
The organisers of the 2008 Dakar, Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), today confirmed at a press conference in Lisbon that the decision had been taken to cancel this year’s rally which was due to start from the Portuguese capital tomorrow morning, Saturday 5th January.
The Rally was going to be the first chance for Mitsubishi to demonstrate the Outlander’s remarkable of off-road capabilities in a support vehicle role. It would also have been Mitsubishi’s chance to successfully defend it’s current title with the Multi-Dakar winning Pajero Evolution before it moves to its high performance diesel range in the 2009 event.
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Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008
Czech Republic truck manufacturer Tatra a.s. is set to investigate the potential market for factory-built international rally-raid and rally assistance FIA category T4 and T5 vehicles. To gauge response, it has supplied Bowler Off-Road Ltd, the UK designers and builders of the Range Rover Sport based Nemesis competition vehicle, with a Tatra prototype T5 class support truck for use on the 2008 Paris-Dakar rally-raid event run from Lisbon in January of this year.
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Friday, December 21st, 2007
The Mitsubishi Outlander has been selected to be the sole support vehicle[1] for Team Repsol Mitsubishi Ralliart’s title defence in 2008. The modified Outlander will tackle the support vehicles’ route, which differs only slightly from the competing cars. These vehicles require a high degree of off-road ability to cross the challenging terrain of the region’s vast, sandy and rocky expanses.
The 2008 Dakar Outlander has been modified to comply with ASO’s[2] safety regulations and features four racing bucket seats with full harness belts, a safety roll-cage, an additional fuel tank, underbody protection, Bose dampers, navigational equipment, and a host of other features. The engine, running gear, and fundamental chassis architecture however remain identical to the standard production car.
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Thursday, November 29th, 2007
January’s Dakar Rally promises to be the toughest yet for the Volkswagen works team and its squad of TDI-powered Race Touaregs, for the 30th running of the world’s toughest motorsport event will be longer and more arduous than ever.
Special stage distance has been lengthened by a third over last year, to 5,736 km (3,562 miles), with the treacherous sand dunes of Mauritania set to provide much of the drama during the 16-day trek from Lisbon, Portugal, to the Senegalese capital of Dakar.
Volkswagen will field four works cars – for Spaniard Carlos Sainz, South African Giniel de Villiers, Germany’s Dieter Depping and American Mark Miller – while a fifth Race Touareg will be run by customer team Lagos and driven by Portugal’s Carlos Sousa. Volkswagen is bidding to become the first manufacturer to win the legendary classic with a diesel car.
Newly crowned FIA Cross-Country Rally World Champion Sainz says the 2008 Dakar will be his most arduous yet: ‘It will be longer, tougher and more difficult. We expect lots of sand dunes and there will be two cross-country legs after which we will be allowed no assistance from mechanics.’
Volkswagen Motorsport Director Kris Nissen added: ‘At almost 6,000 timed kilometres we are in for a very long event, and many days will be spent in the dunes of Mauritania. It will be a great challenge but also a great strain: the drivers and co-drivers will be spending many hours in the cars on the long stages, which means the team will not be able to start work on the cars until late in the evening.’
He believes that the team has a good chance of success following recent tests and promising results in the UAE Desert Challenge in early November, in which Volkswagens finished second and third: ‘We drove a lot on sand on this event and it confirmed that we have achieved notable improvements on this type of terrain.’
‘In Mauritania the rally will return to locations that have not been used on the rally for more than a decade,’ said Dirk von Zitzewitz, who will co-drive for de Villiers. ‘The organisers have announced a number of so-called erg crossings - sand stages that have not previously been driven - and the famous Nega pass, near Kiffa, as special challenges. More than once in the past the outcome of the rally was decided on such types of stage.’
The Volkswagen team’s Race Touaregs, powered by 2.5-litre TDI engines delivering 280 PS, won ten of the 2007 Dakar’s 14 special stages but failed to prevent Mitsubishi claiming a seventh successive overall victory. The Mitsubishi team, led by three-time victor Stéphane Peterhansel, is likely to be Volkswagen’s chief opposition once more. Volkswagen last won the Dakar in 1980, when Swede Freddy Kottulinsky drove his Iltis to victory.
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Wednesday, November 28th, 2007
For the second year running, the Volkswagen Caddy DSG (Direct Shift Gearbox) has achieved honours at the What Van? magazine Van of the Year Awards.
The Caddy DSG, which uses twin clutch technology to provide faster gearchanges than a conventional automatic gearbox, received the exclusive Editor’s Choice award at the magazine’s 2007 awards ceremony in London on Wednesday 28th November. Last year the Volkswagen DSG won the What Van? Technology Award.
‘More and more manufacturers are offering an alternative to the conventional manual gearbox as an extra-cost option. Nobody, however, has come up with a solution that is quite as novel – or quite as effective – as Volkswagen’s DSG. It’s so impressive that it’s a worthy winner of the What Van? Editor’s Choice Award for 2007,’ said Neil McIntee, the Editor of What Van? magazine.
Gemma Cox, Product Manager, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles said: ‘The What Van? awards are a great testament to Volkswagen’s advanced and efficient technology in the Caddy DSG and the quality Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles provide.’
The efficient, six-speed Volkswagen DSG uses two clutches which allow gear changes to occur in less than four hundredths of a second, enabling it to achieve the same 0-62 mph time of 13.3 seconds as the manual transmission with the same 1.9-litre, 104 PS TDI PD engine.
For the driver, the DSG is as easy to use as a conventional automatic transmission with added bonus of being able to select a manual mode and change gear by simply nudging the gearlever up or down.
The DSG is unique in the commercial vehicle market and is exclusively available in the Volkswagen Caddy van with an on the road price of £12,836.28 excluding VAT – a premium of only £1,000 over the equivalent model with manual transmission.
Other recent awards for the Volkswagen Caddy include Best Small Van from Van Fleet World and Professional Van & Light Truck magazines.
Full information of the Volkswagen Caddy van range is available from www.volkswagen-vans.co.uk or by calling 0800 717131.
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