Herndon, VA – Sixteen days. 9,000+ kilometers, and mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds. The Dakar Rally has classically been known as one of, if not the singularly, most difficult racing challenges on the face of the planet. In a rally where 49 people have died in just 39 years of competition, simply making it to the finishing line in one piece remains a major accomplishment. So you’ll understand if we’re just the tiniest bit pleased with ourselves when in 2009, a Volkswagen Touareg not only took first, but second place as well.
The 2009 Dakar Rally was won by the Volkswagen Factory driving team of Giniel de Villiers and Dirk von Zitzewitz, with their Volkswagen teammates Mark Miller and Ralph Pitchford coming in a very close second. This historic victory (the first ever for a diesel powered vehicle) marks a big win for Volkswagen motorsport and perhaps an even bigger win for efficient motoring; the two Touaregs on average achieving over three times the fuel economy of their closest competitors.
Due to some rather dicey security concerns, for the first time in its thirty year history, the Dakar Rally debuted in South America. The new 9,000+ kilometer course was one of the toughest and most challenging in the storied history of the Rally. The course started and finished in Buenos Aires, Argentina and traveled through Argentina and Chile on terrain that included everything from some of the highest sand dune fields on earth, extreme passages through water, and hard stony ground, to traversing the Andes Mountains. If the terrain wasn’t challenging enough, the Volkswagen Motorsport team also had to combat temperature extremes that ranged from 104 degrees Fahrenheit to below 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
