Interestingly enough the Germans call these huge MAN trucks "M-A-N", where they say each letter individually like we would say "GTO". The three letters stand for the name Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nrnberg. This German truck and engine company is a very prestigious commercial vehicle manufacturer in Europe, similar to the American company, International.
If I had to guess, I would say there were more vehicles entered in the Dakar than in a typical SCORE Baja 1000, but the crowd seemed smaller. Of course, the Dakar's tech inspection isn't open to the public like the SCORE tech inspection is. There were a lot of places that I simply wouldn't have been allowed to go if I didn't have a press pass.
DAY 3, 7:30pm
LISBON, PORTUGAL
I had no idea tech inspection would go like that. By 7:30pm local time I'd been through a virtual carnival of booths and document stations to get my insurance worked out, my tollbooth pass, two GPS systems, prove that our VW had a satellite phone, and get tickets for the ferry that would take the Touareg and me across the Mediterranean.Things I wish I had brought with me to the tech inspection:
* A backpack
* A flashlight
* My Gerber Diesel multi-tool
* A video camera
* A receipt for the 42 Euro ($61.00) serial cable I had to buy so the IntelliTrac system that would track our speed and location would work. At the time I didn't know how much 42 euros was in U.S. dollars, but it was all the money I had on me.
* A complete use of the French and German language.