For safety and comfort, the service Touaregs had their interiors gutted and received a roll cage, race seats, and aluminum diamond plate floor reinforcements.
Nearly 600 competitors in cars, trucks, and motorcycles were scheduled to compete. The race was to be made up of 15 individual one-day races (or stages) and all the competitors camp together each night at a temporary pit stop they call a bivouac. It's in the bivouac that competitors eat, sleep, and repair their vehicles. To make things really interesting, all of the support vehicles, spare parts, and supplies for each race team must be trucked to each bivouac every night.
The route itself is notoriously difficult to traverse. Unlike in American off-road racing where GPS navigation is permitted, Dakar competitors must rely on a GPS-based compass and their own skill to find their way through the African deserts. As motorsports go, the Dakar is one of the most difficult and well-known auto races in the world. As such, it attracts the biggest names in European rally racing, as well as car and truck manufacturers looking to make a name for themselves.
Editor David Kennedy received top billing as the driver of record for car 922.
DAY 1, 12:35pm- LOS ANGELES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
I spent New Year's Day at LAX waiting to board my flight, Lufthansa 457, to Frankfurt, Germany. Volkswagen had arranged to fly me in business class on a Boeing 747-400, in seat 12K. I was to be Volkswagen's guest on this 21-day trip, sort of an embedded journalist, and would be following its four diesel-powered Race Touaregs on the 5,700-mile Dakar Rally down the northwest coast of Africa.
For off-road use, the Touareg's electrical system was modified so that all of the vehicle's power can be shut off via a switch on the dash. There is also a switch to disable the anti-lock brakes for driving in the sand, and a switch to pump diesel from the auxiliary tank into the main fuel tank.
While I waited to board, I watched the ground crew shuffle cargo onto our plane, and wondered if I'd see Robby Gordon's Hummer H3 race truck being loaded on. The 747 I was flying in used a neat FMC loading system to lift cargo sleds up into the hold. It was impressive to watch, and I can see how people ship cars and Day 2, 1:15pm Frankfurt Airport, Germany