New Spy Photos Show Porsche 911 Dakar Is Still Under Development

It was early April this year when our photographers spied the Porsche 911 Dakar for the last time and the prototype looked almost ready to morph into a production model. However, it turns out the development work on the lifted sports car is yet to be completed and we have a new batch of spy photos showing another trial vehicle lapping the Nurburgring.

Our spies in Germany caught this 911 Dakar with different ride heights in each lap around the track. The easiest and most logical explanation for that would be an air suspension fitted underneath the more rugged body. This is just a theory but based on what we see in the gallery attached below, it seems that the raised coupe could indeed be equipped with an adjustable air suspension. 

Other than the suspension, this prototype looked exactly like the previous ones we spied earlier this year. Fender extensions, redesigned front and rear bumpers, and additional air intakes on the bonnet round off the design tweaks compared to a regular 911. We don’t know whether there’s an additional LED lighting somewhere in the front fascia, but the amount of black tape suggests there could be details that remain invisible to the eye for the time being.

As far as the name Dakar is concerned, it’s still not official but it seems like the most likely option for the lifted performance coupe. Just recently, the rally legend Walter Rohrl accidentally used the 911 Dakar hash tag in an Instagram post hinting at that name instead of the Safari suffix but that post was quickly deleted shortly after.

We don’t know all the details surrounding the 911 Dakar’s hardware but we believe the base offering will be the Carrera 4S with an all-wheel drive. If that’s indeed the case, the vehicle will have a twin-turbocharged 3.0-liter flat-six engine behind the seats producing 443 horsepower (329 kilowatts) and 390 pound-feet (528 Newton-meters) of torque. More powerful variants could also be launched.

For the time being, we have more questions than answers but we hope everything will become clear very soon. There’s no debut date set from Porsche though we believe the debut will come sooner rather than later.