David Evans was invited to Morocco to get a first-hand look at Defender's Dakar plans and preparation
Photography by Defender & DirtFish
Words by David Evans, DirtFish Head of Media
It’s late. Maybe it’s early. Either way, an advancing fleet of Defender 110s make for an impressive – if slightly gangster – sight.
Sweeping up to the sidewalk outside Errachidia airport at two in the morning, a man called Moi steps from the lead car and encourages us to get in and go. He’s friendly, but the firm handshake means business.
We go.
Heading out through the deserted streets of this Moroccan town, I’m already reasonably convinced Jack Ryan and Jason Bourne are following in the cars behind and our mission is about to ping into Moi’s fancy-looking wristwatch. It’s been a long day. And, I’ll be perfectly honest, I’m not completely sure where in the world – or Africa – I am. I do know I was in Casablanca an hour or so ago. Which was nice.
Moi stares at me through the darkness. He’s got something to say.
“This section was always used when Dakar came through here…”
OK. That’s less surreal than I was expecting.
Where else could you be but the desert for a deep-dive into Defender's first rally car?
For the next hour, we chat about Moi’s 16 Dakar starts from various seats in various vehicles. This place, this terrain, this challenge is what he’s all about. And that’s why Defender hired him.
Defender, by the way, is what this latter-day Landie’s called. More precisely, the one we’re staring at now is called D7X. Or Mule 2, to its mates. But the one we’re really here for is D7X-R. The R denotes the conversion of a $200,000-plus road-goer to Defender’s first factory rally car.
In confirmation that light truly travels faster than sound, the dust trail catches the eye across this sun-bleached north-western fringe of the Sahara Desert. Then, delivered on the wind, there’s the distinct bellow of an angry V8. Stéphane’s coming.
It’s always hard to gauge speed across such a big-sky, bigger-sand vista like this, but it’s clear that Peterhansel is on it. The car’s ability to deal with mid-corner bumps is enormously impressive. In the moment, it’s hard to compute that this is – largely – the same machine that ferried us in near-silence and utter, seat-cooled comfort from airport to hotel just a few hours ago.
That’s why we’re here, but the question remains: why is Defender here? Why now? Granted, Dakar’s always been a solid fit for Landies and Rangies, but there’s never been anything on the scale of this operation. World Rally Championship-winning preparation squad Prodrive has been drafted in and is working on the D7X-Rs alongside Dacia’s T1+ operation running slightly further up the field.
Defender wanted a competition car that really represented its road car in appearnance and characteristics
Maybe Defenders have flopped on the road? Not quite. The old, much-loved Land Rover sold around 12,000 units per year. Since their launch five years ago, Defenders have been flying out the door at almost the same number every month.
“Since we launched [Defender] in 2020, sales have been way in excess of our expectations,” Defender managing director Mark Cameron told DirtFish. “That success hasn’t gone unnoticed by lots of competitors. The rugged SUV category has exploded, with lots of new entrants, particularly from Asia and China in particular.
“We have a bloodline which goes right back to the original Series 1 Land Rover in 1948 and we have to keep Defender in this [market-leading] position. It’s really important to talk not only about the heritage and our rich history, but we also want to demonstrate what a modern Defender can do and going into competition in the toughest rally in the world, the Everest of the rally world was, for me, the obvious next step.”
Makes sense. The next bit makes even more sense.
Cameron continued: “One of the choices we could have taken was to go into the prototype T1+ and go for an outright victory with a really cool Defender rally car. But the bigger point here is to make the connection between the strength and robustness of the production car.”
Defender MD Mark Cameron tells us the motiviation behind the project
What Defender was looking for was, effectively, a return to showroom-spec Group N sport and the ability to genuinely talk of a meaningful stage-to-road comparison. Regulations from the Dakar organizer ASO (Amaury Sport Organisation) and world motorsport’s governing body, the FIA, went some way to allowing for that – but they were ready for an overhaul.
Defender joined Toyota, Nissan and Ford around the table with the ASO and FIA to help deliver a revised set of T2 regulations which help provide the desired clarity of correlation and collaboration ensuring Dakar and the wider World Rally-Raid Championship stack up as a motorsport proposition to all SUV manufacturers. What’s landed is a set of commonsense regulations which allow for stock category competition, while delivering a level of performance which won’t leave them embarrassed by the T1+ spaceships at the top of the timesheets.
“We couldn’t be finishing a day later than the overall winner in Dakar,” said Cameron. “That’s what’s been happening with the current T2 regulations. That wouldn’t work. What we have now is a fast, exciting production-based race car.”
The car that Peterhansel, Sara Price and Rokas Baciuška will use in Dakar is based on the OCTA. This is the brand’s gnarliest motor yet, with a twin-turbo 4.4-liter engine developing 660bhp and capable of hauling close to three tonnes of metal to 60mph in 3.8 seconds. It’s a good place to start.
Head of technical integration for JLR Motorsport (the overarching team which runs the Defender Rally program) Jack Lambert picks up the story.
“The first car was very much an OCTA base,” he said. “We put some big wheels on it, fitted some different suspension and went to learn as much as we could about the car. That was the first mule car.”
That was almost two years ago. They’ve learned a lot, made a second mule and now a first race car.
“We retain the bodyshell and the aluminium architecture. We are allowed to make the car 100mm wider. OCTA is already 68mm wider, so we’ve added an extra 30-mil to that. It made sense to use OCTA for the homologation – we’re required to produce 1,000 of these to use it as the base for the Dakar car, but we already sell between 4,000 and 5,000 units per year anyway.
“We have to retain the front face, but we can chop the front bumper to fit in a new radiator package to help cool the engine. We also add the bash plate from the front all the way underneath the car.
“The engine’s the same as the road car, as is the transmission. The only changes we do for the gearbox is in the software to improve the shift speeds – otherwise, it’s the same paddle shift system you can buy for the road. Again, we’ve used some trick software to bring in a hydraulic handbrake which locks the rear axle.
So much of what's inside the Defender D7X-R is sold on the street
“In terms of the differentials, we have the keep the production cases, but for the internals, the rally car has a mechanical limited-slip diff front and rear. We’ve taken out the low-range aspect out of the transfer box, it’s not needed for competition and the only other change is to add an oil cooler to the transmission.”
The suspension pickup points remain the same, as does the subframe and the geometry, but there’s twice the damping at the rear of the car – partly due to the stage-starting fuel load.
“The tank carries 550 liters,” said Lambert. “Put in two spare wheels and you’re adding upwards of 700 kilos – and that’s without tools, spares and the crew. The rear suspension is critical in managing that.”
And the brakes are similarly key to bringing all of that mass to a stop. This is where the T2 regs compromise performance and force decisions to be made. The T1+ cars run 37-inch wheel and tire package, allowing for discs plenty big enough for the job. The Defender runs a 35-inch equivalent which contains 355mm rotors.
Managing brake performance was key to showroom success back in the day and it’ll be the same here – but the pay-off is a taller sidewall on more strength from the tire.
“For a car that’s running near enough three tonnes, the physics of stopping it are going to be a challenge,” smiled Lambert thinly.
At nearly three tonnes, stopping power is important!
There is, apparently, no stopping the Defender Rally program. As well as committing to three cars for Dakar and two for the remaining four W2RC rounds for at least three years, the company will also be supplying course and official cars to the Dakar organizer.
Cameron steps in to remind us of the core message and the reason why we’re standing in the sun.
“We want to make that connection,” he added. “We want to demonstrate the built-tough nature of the Defender as a core production car. Doing Dakar and starting this program wasn’t about the motorsport team within JLR having a cool idea and trying to rationalise it and back-fit it to a strategy. This is brand-led, this is about showing what Defender is all about.”
And with that, we’re back aboard our own Defenders and heading west. Or maybe south. Could be north. One man knew. We’re all following Moi Torrallardona.
Driving across the Sahara is a humbling business. One of the world’s finest co-drivers – and map-makers – Bobby Willis once told me the Dakar has the ability to bring you very much down to earth and realize you’re nothing more than a grain of sand in the desert. Nosing my way through the dunes, those words came back to me. Trying to read the grip, understand where the sand softened, where to tip-toe and where to keep it pinned was an entirely new experience to me.
David got to drive a road-going Defender over the Moroccan dunes
I’ll admit, the Defender’s brute power, mechanical grip and digital wizardry got me out of trouble on more than one occasion. But, as a benchmark of where Defender’s inaugural Dakar adventure starts, it’s enormously impressive.
And, at every turn, Moi was there to help, cajole and guide. Arriving at the back of a couple of cars, I jumped out to find out what was going on. Down a small dip, there was a river. The intention was to cross it, but recent rain had risen levels. How deep? While the rest of us joked about testing the water, Moi had whipped his boots off and was wading in. Waste deep, he called it. We turned around.
Could we have made it, I asked him later?
“The cars could, David…” he grinned. “And with that we were back to the stories.”
Saudi in January marks the start of something very new and very exciting. Not only will we see a trio of DX7-Rs headed by Mr Dakar himself, but it’s the rebirth of a production-based category which has the potential to become – especially given the prevalence of rugged SUV manufacturers coming in – one of the sport’s most popular and relevant.
Words:David Evans
Tags: Dakar, Dakar 2026, Defender, W2RC, W2RC 2026
Publish Date October 1, 2025 DirtFish
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