Watch The Porsche 911 Dakar Absolutely Shred Off Road Since Owners Likely Won’t

The Porsche 911 is nobody’s first, second, or even third choice for a factory-built adventure rig. Unless you fancy a bit of rooftop camping, the only dirt modern 911s have kicked up is the dust that settled on the owner’s driveway, but those sly engineers at Stuttgart have seemingly changed the game for Porschephiles.

Courtesy of Porsche’s media department and the YOUCAR YouTube channel, we have jaw-droppingly epic stock footage of the 2023 Porche 911 Dakar shredding it in a myriad of environments you’d least expect to see a 911. Complete with raw exhaust noise from that masterpiece of a flat-six, we see Porsche’s rugged new lovechild three-wheel, slow crawl, and, yes, kick up a high-speed dust storm over jumps and fire roads. Winter driving footage comes a few minutes in, and viewers sticking around until the end are rewarded with a “Roughroads”-liveried Dakar hooning alongside the original Rothmans 911 rally car.

Come on. Is that gearhead ASMR or what? 

For those who’ve missed the memo, the 911 Dakar is Porsche’s limited-run homage to the Dakar Rally (formerly known as the Paris-Dakar) and Porsche’s wildly successful coven of sports cars-turned-rally monsters, the likes of which have been immortalized as inspirations for Safari builds. The Dakar is based on the Carrera 4 GTS chassis, with wide hips, increased and adjustable ride height, and enough underbody armor to suit some trucks. Ride height has been raised by 2.0 inches and can raise another 1.2 inches depending on the drive mode. The all-wheel drive system harnesses all 473 horsepower and 420 pound-feet from the three-liter turbo flat-six to hit 60 in an estimated 3.2 seconds and the quarter-mile in an estimated 11.6 seconds. Top speed is a tire-limited 149 miles per hour, with the Dakar rolling on specially-constructed Pirelli Scorpion all-terrains befitting of a Raptor.

Being a one-of-2,500 work of whimsy costing $222,000 a pop before any dastardly markups, I can’t imagine many, if any, first buyers caning these cars anywhere near as hard as the test drivers. But hey, I suppose it’s a win if it means those three or four eccentric sports car overlanders can go that teeny smidge farther into the wildlands. 

Kudos to Porsche for one hell of a machine, as we likely won’t see another factory effort of its kind for quite a while, or at least until after the Huracán Sterrato rears its smug Italian head.