Prodrive is preparing a car for the Dakar Rally

Prodrive, the Banbury-based motorsport firm, has six World Rally Championship titles, five Le Mans class wins and four British Touring Car Championships to its name. Not a bad record at all, but it’s now setting sights on a different competition altogether – Dakar.

Yep, the ex-McRae lads and lasses have teamed up with the Bahrain Mumtalakat Holding Company – the sovereign wealth fund of the Kingdom of Bahrain – to develop a new all-wheel drive rally raid car that’ll compete in the top level T1 class. 

The Dakar Rally moved to Saudi Arabia for the 2020 iteration after a decade of the gruelling endurance event in South America. January’s race was won by 57-year-old Carlos Sainz Snr in a Mini X-raid that was sponsored by the Mumtalakat Holding Company, so it’s no surprise to see the Kingdom upping its involvement.

The deal with Prodrive has seen a new company created. Known as Prodrive International, it’ll design, manufacture and run two factory cars in the 2021 Dakar Rally whilst also supplying customer teams with cars and parts.

Prodrive tells us development of the car has been underway since mid-2019, and that construction of the first one has commenced at the company’s Banbury HQ. It’ll use a 3.5-litre twin-turbo V6 (Ford EcoBoost, anyone?) making 400bhp and 516lb ft and a six-speed sequential transmission. Ian Callum – yes, that Ian Callum – is doing the styling.

Stay tuned for more info…