Prodrive has beaten Porsche and Lamborghini in the race to put an off-road supercar on the street, or perhaps that should be sand. The company’s Hunter “all-terrain adventure vehicle” is based on the Bahrain Raid Xtreme competition car driven by multiple WRC champ Sebastian Loeb in the Dakar Rally, but Prodrive claims the production version is even wilder.
We already know that Porsche and
Lamborghini are preparing to drop off-road supercars, but neither the lifted
911 or the Huracan spotted in spy photos has a hope of tackling the kind of
ground the Hunter can handle. Built around a high tensile steel space frame
chassis and featuring double wishbone suspension and twin adjustable dampers at
each corner, the Hunter offers 15.8-in (400 mm) of wheel travel, an increase of
2.0-in (50 mm) over the competition car that came second to Toyota in this
year’s Dakar rally.
Power output is also superior on the
production car because it doesn’t have to be artificially restricted to comply
with racing regulations. The customer-spec Hunter’s 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6
delivers 600 hp, an increase of 50 percent, plus 700 Nm of
torque. That’s sent to the huge 35-inch off-road tires via a six-speed
paddle-shift transmission that replaces the six-speed sequential manual fitted
to Loeb’s ride.
Prodrive reckons the Hunter should be good
for zero to 100 km/h in less than four seconds and will keep on
trucking until it’s knocking on the door of 300 km/h, but stresses
that the whole car has been optimized for off-highway situations to give owners
a taste of what it’s like to drive Loeb’s Dakar racer, but with some of the
comforts of a road car.
Former Jaguar designer Ian Callum penned
the original rally version and returned to make some tweaks to the look of the
composite bodywork, while inside, drivers get a digital display and a
conventional center console housing typical road car controls. Just don’t
expect Rolls Royce comforts, though a Rolls Royce-grade bank balance might be
useful if you want to add one to your garage: the Hunter costs £ 1.25 million
(US$ 1.65 m at current exchange rates) plus local taxes.
