PORSCHE 911 DAKAR

TESTED 19.1.23, MOROCCO ON SALE SOLD OUT PRICE £173,000 | Safari 911s have long been cult favourites. Now at last Porsche has made one you can buy. With 473bhp and 4WD, is it the ultimate desert racer?

- ANDREW FRANKEL

What is the new Porsche 911 Dakar? That's a question as simple to ask as it is complex to answer, for this car is so very many things.

A consumer journalist might consider it a shrewd investment, because production is limited to 2500 units, all sold save China's allocation, and those only because the order book hasn't yet opened there. A staffer from Practical OffRoader or some other made-up title might regard it as a brilliant new twist to the long since hackneyed SUV theme, while one from The Engineer might wonder how both front and rear suspension lifts were installed and how it was discovered that the car would be safe while fully extended at 110mph on sand.

But probably most judgements will come from passers-by who may not be aware that the Roughroads livery that fully 70% of 911 Dakars will carry pays homage to the fact that in 1984, Jacky Ickx won the Paris-Dakar Rally in the very first four-wheel-drive 911 - which wasn't actually called a 911 at all but a 953hence the roundels on the sides. And I fear their reactions may not be as universally warm as an owner may be expecting as they cruise the King's Road in their jacked-up, warpainted 911 that cost twice as much as a standard 911 Carrera.

Me? I've never had much time for cultivating my image, concerningly comfortable as I am with the slightly shambolic, superannuated hack motif that appears to pass for my natural oeuvre these days. It helps, really, because it allows me to assess properties such as this for what they are, without tying both you and me in knots trying to second-guess what image an owner may think it projects of them and assessing the size of the reality gap between that and what onlookers may really be thinking. But I'm guessing that it's considerable.