Dakar Rally

Italian electric motorcycle manufacturer Tacita is preparing to launch a new rally-focused bike in early January – and has just announced that it'll take the T-Race Rally out for a public debut at the world's greatest and most historic rally event.

With January’s Dakar Rally fast approaching, Mini has lifted the curtain on the buggy it hopes will carry its drivers to victory.

The world's most grueling rally event is underway again, as more than 330 cars, trucks, bikes and quads set off for at least 3,100 miles (5,000 km) of high speed machine torture in the 41st Dakar Rally. This year's course takes competitors on a lap of southern Peru, starting and finishing in Lima.

Once the Dakar force to beat, Mini has had to sit by and watch Peugeot's beastly 2WD overshadow it the past two years. Now it's experimenting with a rugged 2WD buggy of its own, preparing to run both 2WD and 4WD cars at next year's Dakar. Are Peugeot's days at the top numbered?

Peugeot's first three attempts at returning to the Dakar Rally were 13th in 2015, a win in 2016 and a 1-2-3 finish in 2017. How do you follow that up? The team has designed and built a radical much-wider car for next year's race, and will test it thoroughly in the Silk Way Rally in China next week.

The Paris-Dakar Rally is one of the toughest tests in international motorsport, pitting cars against blazing heat and shifting sand dunes over the course of two weeks. Acciona has become the first team to survive it in an all-electric car, completing the 2017 event in the Acciona 100% EcoPowered.

The Peugeot 2008 DKR came, it improved, and it conquered. And now it steps aside to make room for an official successor, the equally angry and intimidating 3008 DKR.

Coming off a loss to Iveco on its 2016 campaign, Russian Dakar staple Kamaz has designed an all-new truck pointed directly at the 2017 Dakar event. The big, bad, blacked-out Master "Kapotnik" features a new layout and a 980-hp powertrain.

The Peugeot 2008 DKR was one of the most beastly off-roaders we looked at in 2014. Its large, rugged looks didn't translate to success at Dakar earlier this year, however. So Peugeot developed the even bigger, gnarlier 2008 DKR16.

One of the toughest, meanest new vehicles of 2014, the 2008 DKR is being prepped for Peugeot's 2015 return to the Dakar Rally. We've already looked at the drastic body modifications, and now we have the details on what will be propelling the rally car up powdery hills and over rough desert floors.

This week, Peugeot shared the first details and pictures of the off-roader it will put to the test on South American soil in next year's Dakar Rally. The 2008 DKR is a big, brutal version of its namesake crossover, and it looks hungry for a win.

New names dominated the Dakar Rally this year - MINI won 1-2 first time out, and Iveco took away truck honors from traditional winners Kamaz. For KTM, it was business as usual with a 12th straight win