The amazing return of the off-road sports car

Dust in the rims, dirt in the profile and dirt on the paintwork - when Porsche published the first photos of the latest 911 variant a few weeks ago, there wasn't much of the usual shine to be seen. While such hp premieres are usually presented in the best light, the Swabians didn't even clean this car before the shoot. But of course that was no negligence, but strict calculation.

After all, the cloth was not pulled by any other 911 for the race track at the premiere, but by the first real sports car for the mogul slope: With deep-tread tires and increased ground clearance, the 911 Dakar is reminiscent of the rally racers with which the Swabians used in the traveled the African continent in the 1980s.

In contrast to the past, the racer is now also intended for customers. Starting in the summer, for prices starting at 222,020 euros, anyone can plow through the offside with the 353 kW/480 hp sports car on stilts.

Even if Porsche only wants to build 2500 Dakar, this car has a symbolic meaning. Because 20 years after the Swabians were the first sports car manufacturer to bring an off-road vehicle onto the market and have strayed so far from their roots, the pendulum is now swinging back a little. And they are not alone in this.

The sister brand Lamborghini, which now sells no more cars than the SUV Urus, joins the tentative counter-movement. The Italians jack up the Huracán and drive it up in 1499 copies as a Sterrato.

The athlete gets a good four centimeters more ground clearance, a wider track, plastic planks along the wheel arches and the belt line, and two distinctive additional headlights on the hood. There is also a new air intake on the roof. In the rear, the 5.2-liter V10 engine is still raging, but its output has been slightly throttled to 449 kW/610 hp.

Is that just an attempt to get even more money out of an already extensive model family after comparatively little effort? Or is there more behind it?

In any case, design professor Lutz Fügener from the Hof University of Applied Sciences can definitely get something out of this concept. And in several respects:

Aesthetic, because a down-to-earth attitude is good for many a decorated vehicle and because a sports car that has proven its worth off-road is always superior to an SUV, no matter how well designed, simply because of its proportions and shape.

Practical because the protective equipment and the lift can increase the utility value and the price in the form of poorer aerodynamics is marginal.

Economically, because the world has also become more complex for manufacturers of sports cars, and they find new arguments for their classic models when a flood of new e-sports cars is crashing into their ears on the road.

The sports cars on stilts are literally conquering new, somewhat more impassable terrain and thus also new groups of buyers. Even with regard to a possible speed limit, this expansion seems far-sighted to Fügener, because it means that – at least in this country – there is no reason for many to buy a fast car.

And the off-road racing cars are always slower than their production counterparts: Porsche limits the Dakar to 240 instead of 309 kilometers per hour (km/h) and Lamborghini limits the Sterrato to 260 instead of 325 km/h.

But there are also dissenting voices - for example from the Cologne design professor and PS philosopher Paolo Tumminelli. One can view the jacked-up sports car as a necessary consequence of the increase in traffic roundabouts, speed bumps and potholes: "In this sense, the cross between an SUV and a sports car is the contemporary way of counteracting the demise of the open road."

But at the same time he sees this as a renewed sign of the inability of the horsepower industry to develop meaningful visions for a social, economical and ecological automobile. "Instead, the automobile is celebrated here as a toy of a pseudo-elitist fringe society."

As different as their assessments are, both experts agree on one thing: the idea of ​​the sports car on stilts is not as new as the manufacturers like to make it out to be: Fügener sees it as the logical continuation of what happened with cars like the Audi Allroad or the Volvo Cross Country has started.

"You put rubber boots on a car, set them a little higher, cover them with plastic and thus prepare them for bad roads and against minor damage."

And Tumminelli thinks first and foremost of the original Safari Porsches, the 1973 Lancia Stratos, and more recently the Italdesign study Parcours that transformed the 2013 Lamborghini Gallardo into an SUV.

"At the time, the VW group didn't dare to go into series production," says Tumminelli. "But ten years later, Lamborghini and Porsche suddenly wake up and reinvent their past."

Design professor Fügener admits that cars like the Dakar and Sterrato only occupy a niche segment: "But attention and thus the potential for appeal to mass-produced goods is definitely there."

If the cars are successful, similar concepts will probably soon be seen in vehicles with lower prices and higher quantities, Fueger suspects: "Perhaps the long-awaited alternative to the currently all-dominant luxury SUV is emerging."

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