The Mini John Cooper Works Buggy Is The Retro-Cool Entry To The 2018 Dakar Rally
Mini is adding some extra interest to this year’s Dakar Rally with a two-pronged assault using all-wheel drive and rear-wheel drive.
Alongside the John Cooper Works Rally, a conventional all-wheel drive rally monster, Mini and its Dakar Rally racing partner, X-raid, is throwing the John Cooper Works Buggy into the mix.
This rear-wheel drive joy machine should be an absolute blast to drive. It’s powered by a 3.0-litre straight-six diesel with 335bhp and 590lb ft, “newly conceived” but based heavily on a BMW unit. The same engine sits inside the JCW Rally.
The Buggy, though, is by far the cooler racer. The body is made of carbonfibre-reinforced plastic, while kevlar is stretched over the tubular steel frame.
Apparently, during testing, the Buggy didn’t have to stop once for a mechanical failure or breakdown. That should be a cast-iron guarantee that something important will break on stage one of the actual rally…
Three of them will race alongside four JCW Rally cars when the event starts on 6 January in Lima, Peru. This event is the 40th annual running of the race, dubbed the toughest of its kind in the world.
Comments
Yep, I definitely see the resemblance.
I think they were going for more of this look
WHAT IS THIS
Random Related meme appears . . . .
Nice one. 😂
MattKimberley The two last paragraphs are repeated
Yeah!
I was about to comment about that!
My reaction when I sawn it
When they say its just a car
It looks like a right laugh and I want one.
I know that’s not the point of the vehicle, but it doesn’t look like a Mini Cooper at all
It’s so pointless to try making them similar… Don’t know why companies do this. We all know they’re not the same car.
They should make a road legal version.
They should have made it resemble the original Moke. That would be cool.
I wonder why they choose to go with diesel power instead of petrol.
Because they have more torque and more fuel efficiency. If you think about it, that’s very useful in the Dakar Rally :)
that thing screams 3008 DKR copycat all the way… witch also uses a 3 litter diesel RWD setup…