Evoque-style Dakar racer unveiled

If your brain's cognitive abilities have been rendered dysfunctional due to overpowering thoughts about how a hard, uncompromising and lightly insane Range Rover Evoque would look, your life may continue: this is how a hard, uncompromising and lightly insane Range Rover Evoque looks.

Except it's not actually an Evoque of any description.

This is a rendering of what all-British Dakar Rally team Excite Rallye Raid intends to field in the fabled desert race in 2013.

It is called the D4 WN5, and Englishmen Martin Rowe, John Hardy and Andrew Coley will pilot it, probably quite violently. Specially commissioned by the Excite team from RaBe Race Cars using the 'flavour' of the new Rangie, it features a BMW 3.0-litre diesel engine capable of 350bhp but restricted to 275bhp, a six-speed ZF transmission, viscous diffs that are good for 1,000bhp and four-wheel-drive. Oh, and that engine also packs a healthy 480lb ft of torques. In the pantheon of torques, this is Many.

That Evoque-style body hides a bespoke chassis made from T45 tubes, and has been literally crash tested for over four years. The suspension - twin Reiger dampers on each corner - cost £5000 each and feature a variety of tricks a Terminator would find advanced.

A corner control valve detects whether you're on a straight or corner and adjusts the compression damping of the outer wheel, meaning less body roll, while a rebound control valve softens the damping depending on - and this is brilliant - whether the wheels are on the ground or not. An Evoque catching some air? We think so.

It measures in at 3.8m long, runs on 16in RallyRaid wheels and BF Goodrich desert race tyres, gets a 260 litre fuel tank and weighs in at 1,900kg.

Mike Jones of RaBe Race Cars told TopGear.com: "We've worked hard to get the handling and reliability perfect, but also keeping a fantastic dune driving ability which is all too easily lost when designing such cars.

"We will produce a winning car. It took VW millions and five years to win Dakar. Being English, we'll do it our way."

Even though it's just a rendering, admit it, you were scared, weren't you? We are now of the opinion all Range Rover Evoques should come out of the factory like this.

Drivers Andrew Coley and Martin Rowe