Imagine a 3,100 mile / 5,000 kilometer overland route through unforgiving, trackless terrain. Now imagine driving that route at breakneck speed. Off-road rally racers endure days of brutal driving for competitive glory. Not surprisingly, the Toyota Hilux has a history of cross country rallying success. Competitive overlanders, amateurs and professionals alike, can push their Toyota Hilux to the limit in grueling rally raids. The Toyota Hilux’s unbeatable reputation has been validated many times over with electrifying rally raid wins.
The Toyota Hilux is ubiquitous at the broadly popular World Rally-Raid Championship (W2RC) series, an annual competition of five rally raid circuits that takes place over the course of a year. The renowned Dakar Rally, the quintessential rally raid, is the main event of the W2RC. The Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge is one of the most demanding cross-country rallies held in the Middle East, with a mix of dune bashing, desert navigation, and high-speed trails across the United Arab Emirates. Taking place largely in Portugal, the BP Ultimate Rally-Raid challenges drivers with beaches, forests, and rocky paths. One of Argentina’s most challenging rally raids, traversing the iconic Ruta 40 from north to south, the Desafio Ruta 40 covers mountains, rivers, and deserts. The Rallye du Maroc (Rally of Morocco) serves as an essential preparatory event for teams competing in the Dakar Rally, offering terrains from rocky tracks to sandy dunes. The Toyota Hilux has seen significant success in this rally, with teams often securing top positions. The Andalusia Rally in Spain is a new addition to the rally raid calendar but quickly gained popularity as another important preparatory event for the Dakar Rally. It offers a mix of fast tracks and technical sections. The Sonora Rally in Mexico is North America’s premier rally raid, offering challenging navigation through the vast Sonoran Desert. The Sonora Rally’s dunes, rocky trails, and desert landscapes provide an excellent proving ground for the Toyota Hilux.
Toyota Hilux pickups and Hilux offshoots win rally raids. The Toyota Hilux’s heritage of extreme build-outs makes it an obvious choice for off-road racing.
The Toyota Hilux Dakar: Made for Rally Raids
As Hiluxes go, the Hilux Dakar is a radical departure from the stock vehicle. But, like the street-legal version, the Toyota Hilux Dakar has a reputation for strength and reliability. Toyota’s formal name for the Hilux Dakar – IMA – references the vehicle’s independent rear suspension, mid-mounted engine, and all-wheel drive. Justin Nguyen, writing of the Toyota Hilux Dakar at the 2023 Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, notes that “appropriately, the top performing vehicle was a pickup truck so iconically durable that deserts have historically been navigated in virtually every manner from insurgencies to motorsport.”
Named for the world-renowned Dakar Rally (described below), the Hilux Dakar’s specifications are strictly regulated. Power, size, weight, materials, and navigational aids are dictated by rally raid rules. Regulations are incrementally tightened each year, requiring teams to adapt to stay competitive.
The first iteration of the Toyota Hilux Dakar was designed and built for the 2011 Absa South African Off Road Championship at the Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa (TGRSA) workshop in Midrand, Gauteng, South Africa by Imperial Toyota Team South Africa and was sponsored by Toyota South Africa Motors (“Gazoo” is a transliteration of the Japanese Gazō – 画像 – meaning “image”).
The Hilux Dakar is engineered for punishing rally raid hazards. Engines, pushed to their limits in high desert temperatures, are prone to overheating, as are differentials and gear boxes. Tire punctures from heat, terrain, sharp maneuvers, and hard landings plague most runs. Extra fuel, spare wheels, and repair and recovery tools are obligatory for rally raid vehicles.
Toyota Hilux Dakars regularly go airborne in rally raids, soaring from the crests of sand dunes. At high speed, even a road bump can send a Toyota Hilux Dakar flying. Losing traction and rolling down the side of a dune, or landing hard from a cliff, can roll the vehicle or flip it end-over-end, thoroughly shaking the driving team. Unseen obstacles like boulders and clumps of deeply rooted camel grass can snag and overturn a rally raid vehicle. Such accidents are common, but seldom catastrophic for the expertly engineered vehicles. Most competing Hilux Dakars are repaired in time for the next segment, barring any race penalties that may have been incurred.
The Toyota Hilux Dakar is based on series production vehicles but was developed specifically for competition. While the engine is derived from production vehicles, the Hilux Dakar’s carbon fiber bodywork is mounted to a custom tubular racing chassis.
Superficially resembling a stock Toyota Hilux, the Hilux Dakar is beefier, with a wider wheelbase and larger sidewalls. A prominent radiator grille incorporates horizontal slats for protection. An elevated bumper with ample ground clearance, armored with skid plates, protects the undercarriage when driving over obstacles. A striking difference between the Toyota Hilux Dakar and its stock counterparts is the Hilux Dakar’s lack of a truck bed, replaced with mounts for heavy-duty sand plates. The plates, used as traction aids to recover from sinking in soft sand, also serve as a counterweight to the front-heavy vehicle. (Before a 2019 revamp, the maximum number of allowed spare wheels – three – served as a rear-end counterweight. Spare wheels are mounted under the cab of later Hilux Dakar models.)
A prototype suspension with dual shock absorbers for each wheel protects against hard landings. Larger brakes are needed to stop on a dime at high speeds when unanticipated obstacles or drops are spotted by the navigator. The Toyota Hilux Dakar has no traction control or anti-lock braking system (ABS). An expanded tank keeps these relatively inefficient vehicles fueled for long stretches.
The cramped cabin is highly customized. An integrated roll cage, sculpted race seats, and racing harnesses protect the driver and navigator from rollovers and hard landings. The dashboard is laden with gauges and screens to monitor the vehicle’s health. A road book, a paper scroll or digital screen mounted in the cab, lists landmarks for the navigator (maps are forbidden). Windows are sealed, and air conditioning is omitted to save weight and power (in the heat of a race, the cabin can reach temperatures of 156°F / 60°C). First aid, a fire extinguisher, cables, wires, and ductwork fill the remaining space. The noise inside the cabin is deafening, requiring the driver and navigator to communicate by 2-way helmet radios.
A significant revamp was made for the 2019 Dakar Rally, led by TGRSA Team Principal Glyn Hall. A standard 2019 double-cab Toyota Hilux and 5 liter naturally aspirated gasoline V8 engine, mid-mounted for balance, was tweaked by the team to produce 385 horsepower and 620 Nm of torque. A new suspension geometry was incorporated for sharper handling. The gearbox remained stock. This iteration of the Toyota Hilux Dakar won its class at the 2019 Dakar Rally.
The Toyota GR DKR Hilux T1+
The next revamp, made for the Dakar Rally 2022, was substantial. Based on the proven design that won Dakar in 2019, the 2022 variant followed specifications for the newly introduced T1+ regulations. The resulting Toyota GR DKR Hilux T1+ would establish itself as a leader of its class. The Dakar Rally supports five vehicle categories: Purpose-cars (the category for the Toyota Hilux), motorcycles, trucks, quads, and utility terrain vehicles (UTVs). Cars are further refined as T1 (purpose-built, improved cross-country vehicles, T2 (cross-country series production vehicles), and T3 (light vehicles) subcategories. The T1 category, the most common, the fastest, and arguably the most popular at the Dakar Rally, was further fine-tuned with the addition of the T1+ classification, which increased tire size by 2 inches, from 35 to 37 inches, and tread from 245mm to 320mm.
The Toyota GR DKR Hilux T1+ is powered by a Land Cruiser 300 GR Sport 3.5 liter twin-turbo powered gasoline V6 engine. A single-shock suspension system increased travel from 280mm to 350mm. The fuel tank was expanded to hold 142 gallons / 540 liters. Unpainted aluminum wheels improve heat dissipation. A new body style, with distinctive front grille and bumper styling, reinforces the Hilux Dakar’s assertiveness.
Toyota doesn’t publish the annual budget for their Toyota Gazoo Racing motorsport division, but the financial costs must be substantial. Beyond the prestige of winning titles, the research and engineering committed to projects like the Hilux Dakar push the boundaries of automotive technology. Advancements made to win punishing desert rally raids may find their way into production vehicles like Toyota’s GR Sport models.
Hilux Dakar Dominates the World Rally-Raid Championship
Off-road rally raids are popular worldwide. Perhaps no rally raid series better challenges the Toyota Hilux as the World Rally-Raid Championship (W2RC). Since 2022, W2RC has coordinated rally raids with a significant Toyota presence.
Governed by the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) and the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM), renowned sanctioning organizations for motorsports, the W2RC unifies and organizes rally raids, some with decades of history, under a single banner. The W2RC represents the pinnacle of long-distance, off-road racing.
Each annual W2RC is typically a five-round race, scheduled over the course of the year, starting in January and ending in October. Each round is staged over several days in a different part of the globe. Specific routes and stages change some years in response to political and environmental pressures, and each stage varies the terrain and conditions. Courses of mountains, dunes, and rocks require precise technical driving at high speeds, alternating with full throttle racing over stretches of straight, flat ground. Drivers are thoroughly shaken as they haul over corrugated roads, vault over the crests of dunes, and drift through mud. Visibility is obscured by dust. Punctures are common. Teams are up against accidents, breakdowns, getting lost, and physical exhaustion. Amateur and professional teams compete, with amateurs coming from all walks of life.
Al-Attiyah and Baumel: Toyota’s Unbeatable Rally Raid Team
TGRSA’s winning W2RC team in 2022 and 2023 was the legendary Qatari rally raid driver Nasser Al-Attiyah and French navigator Mathieu Baumel. The team shares many rally raid victories, including multiple wins at the Rally of Morocco, the FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies, the Rallye du Maroc, the Silk Way Rally, the Qatar Cross-Country Rally, and the famed Dakar Rally. Prior to participating in the W2RC, Al-Attiyah (born in 1970) drove a Hilux to victory twice, in 2016 and 2017, for Toyota at the FIA’s Cross-Country World Cup. A five-time Dakar Rally winner, he previously won the Dakar Rally in 2011 for team Volkswagen. Nasser Al-Attiyah is also an Olympian, winning the bronze medal for men’s skeet shooting at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, England. Baumel, born in 1976, won the Dakar Rally four times with Al-Attiyah. Writes Richard Lane for Autocar of the pair, “the Frenchman’s quiet warmth and meticulous attitude to preparation plays well alongside the Qatari’s infectious enthusiasm and evident driving flair.” This team established the Toyota Hilux Dakar as a W2RC leader in its class.
The Dakar Rally, the world’s longest, toughest motor race, is the flagship event of the W2RC. It’s common for less than half of entrants to cross the finish line in this globally celebrated competition, second only to Formula 1. First run in 1978 from Paris, France to Dakar, Senegal through the Sahara Desert by way of Algeria, Niger, Mali, and Upper Volta, the race is now held entirely in Saudi Arabia. Immediately popular, Toyota was represented in the Dakar Rally the following year, in 1979. Subsequent Dakar Rallys have been held in South Africa, Spain, Egypt, and South America.
The uncompromising terrain of any Dakar Rally demands a 4×4 capable of high speeds and withstanding abuse. Conditions are treacherous. Crashes and injuries are not uncommon. Deaths are not unknown.
2012 was the first year that Toyota entered a Hilux in the Dakar Rally, taking second place in a 4,900 mile / 8,000 kilometer journey through Argentina, Chile, and Peru. Toyota’s first Dakar Rally Hilux victory came in 2019 (before the rally raid was affiliated with the W2RC) in a 3,100 mile / 5,000 kilometer, ten day contest through the sandy deserts of southern and central Peru. Mountains, dunes, and vast stretches of fesh-fesh – powdery sand that sinks vehicles, clogs air intakes, and pushes engines to their limits – defined the terrain. Daytime temperatures reached over 100°F / 40°C. Competing against over five hundred competitors from fifty-four nations in all categories, TGRSA entered three Hilux teams in 2019. Al-Attiyah and Baumel drove Hilux #301. Hilux #302, driven by Giniel de Villiers (South Africa) and Dirk von Zitzewtiz (Germany), and #309, driven by Bernhard Ten Brinke (the Netherlands) and Xavier Panseri (France), suffered irreparable damage and were unable to complete the rally. Al-Attiyah and Baumel led the ten-stage loop starting from stage 3 and won the 2019 T1 class by an impressive 46 minutes and 42 seconds.
TGRSA entered four Hilux teams for the Dakar Rally in 2020, the first to take place entirely in Saudi Arabia. Seventy-five percent of the race was over sand. Al-Attiyah and Baumel lead in Hilux #300. Giniel de Villiers returned, driving with navigator Alex Haro Bravo (Spain) in Hilux #304. Bernhard Ten Brinke and new navigator Tom Colsoul (Belgium) were behind the wheel of Hilux #307, and famed Spanish racing driver Fernando Alonso and Spanish navigator Marc Coma drove Hilux #310. In the first stage of the rally raid, #310 collided with a rock, damaging the vehicle’s suspension and front left wheel. Hilux #300 had a near-perfect run in stage 4, with zero punctures, mechanical failures, or navigation problems. In stage 5, de Villiers in #304 suffered a serious neck injury that didn’t stop the team from completing the stage. Hilux #310 rolled twice after misjudging a dune in stage 10, shattering the windshield. Alonso and Coma dispensed with the windshield and continued the race without. TGRSA took second in 2020’s overall results.
A four-crew TGRSA Hilux team competed in the 2021 Dakar Rally, with Al-Attiyah and Baumel in Hilux #301. Giniel de Villiers and Spanish navigator Alex Haro Bravo drove Hilux #304. South Africans Henk Lategan & navigator Brett Cummings, and Shameer Variawa & navigator Dennis Murphy, drove Hiluxes #332 and #330, respectively. In stage 5, #332 struck a ditch, flipping end-over-end. Neither driver nor navigator suffered serious injuries but were forced to retire from the race. In 2021 TGRSA took second place at the Dakar Rally, with Al-Attiyah and Baumel winning five of twelve stages.
The 2022 Dakar Rally, the first under the umbrella of the W2RC, was pivotal for TGRSA with the introduction of their all-new Toyota GR DKR Hilux T1+, redesigned for the W2RC’s newly introduced T1+ category. These upgrades, Al-Attiyah’s driving prowess, and Baumel’s masterful navigation led TGRSA to victory. A four-car team of Al-Attiyah and Baumelin (#201), South Africans de Villiers and Murphy (#207), Lategan and Cummings (#225), and Variawa with navigator Danie Stassen (#233) took an early lead of 48 minutes, 54 seconds in the rally raid opening. Through skilled navigation and driving, the team’s lead was never under threat. Al-Attiyah and Baumel won the event overall by 27 minutes, 46 seconds, the second Toyota win for the team since 2019.
The matchless TGRSA team of Nasser Al-Attiyah and Mathieu Baumel raced their final Dakar Rally for TGRSA in 2023. Tougher T1+ specifications for the 2023 rally raid saw TGRSA reducing the power output of the GR DKR Hilux T1+ by 30kW and updating the vehicles’ software re-balanced for performance. Additionally, TGRSA reinforced the differentials and suspension, and optimized the transmission of the GR DKR Hilux T1+. The three TGRSA teams were familiar from 2022, with Al-Attiyah and Baumel behind the wheel of #200, de Villiers and Murphy driving #205, and Lategan and Cummings in #217. Al-Attiyah and Baumel took an early lead. Halfway through the 14-stage rally raid, they led the pack by over an hour. #217 damaged its right rear upright and brake disc in a low-speed roll over soft sand in stage 12. The 30-minute setback did not prevent Lategan and Cummings from pressing on. #205 suffered a malfunctioning left-front damper in stage 13, significantly slowing the progress of de Villiers and Murphy. At the end of the rally, Al-Attiyah and Baumel finished more than an hour and twenty minutes ahead of the competition, winning the Dakar Rally for TGRSA two years in a row. Four Toyota Hilux T1+s finished in the top five at Dakar 2023.
The Al-Attiyah and Baumel team won the entire World Rally-Raid Championship for TGRSA in 2022 and 2023, scoring the most points as manufacturer’s champion in its class. Nasser Al-Attiyah and Mathieu Baumel retired from TGRSA after their 2023 victory.
Toyota Hilux Dakar: 4×4 Champion
Since its formation, Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa has dominated the W2RC with its unstoppable Toyota Hilux Dakar competition car. TGRSA’s determined, trained team, masterful driving and navigation, and the highly refined Toyota GR DKR Hilux T1+ proved to be a potent combination.
Rally raid racing pushes vehicles to their absolute limit. Only uncommonly resilient off-road vehicles have a chance at completing, let alone winning, a rally raid like the Dakar Rally. Rally raid drivers and navigators cope with unpredictable terrains at high speeds, navigating complex courses over vast distances and relying on landmarks to find their way through unmapped environments. Rally raid teams must be self-sufficient, particularly in multi-day events like the Dakar Rally, where mechanical self-reliance and the ability to perform repairs in the field can make the difference between finishing and failing. The Hilux, engineered as a 4×4 workhorse by Toyota, is represented in spirit by Toyota’s incomparable Hilux Dakar.