My road to Dakar
My name is Anders Svensson.
For over thirty years the Dakar rally has fascinated me.
Six years ago I decided to fulfil my dream to actively participate in the Dakar rally. The first thing I needed was a rally license which required me to take a rally course and after that to participate in a rally as a debutant. With this first stage completed and my rally license in my wallet, I bought a used Volvo 940 standard as my first rally car. With that car I participated in approximately 20 rallies.
As I gained experience, I wanted more from a car and decided to build my own rally car from scratch. The 940 had performed well so I bought a ”new” Volvo 940 model year 1992 and built a Volvo Original (VOC) class rally car. With this car I participated in a further twenty races or more.
While competing with my Volvo VOC I started to consider how I might compete in the Dakar. Which car I might chose and in which class I would compete in. The choice it seemed was between classes T1 and T2. Class T1 requires a prototype car built from scratch with a tubular frame whilst Class T2 is based on a production car homologated by FIA.
So I pondered on whether to buy a used purpose-built T1 or to build my own T2 from a standard donor car. To help me with my decision I researched companies that have experience of building rally cars and I visited both Rally Raid in England and Pewano in Sweden. The requirements for my rally car got clearer with each visit and in 2013 I visited Portugal to look at a Baja Portalegre 500. During that trip I met Prolama, a company with 15 years of experience converting Isuzu pickups to Cross Country Rally cars.
I liked what I saw and once back home again, I decided to compete with an Isuzu D-Max. This car is available as a used car on the Swedish market and I found one suitable for the task at hand. I then drove the car 3300 kilometres down to Portugal to Prolama for transformation to a Cross Country rally car. By the autumn of 2015 the car was ready to race. When the car was back in Sweden the Swedish Automobile Sports Federation, SBF homologated the car. Follow the link to the SBF homepage to read more. http://www.sbf.se/Nyheter/SvenskBilsport/ForstasvenskaCrossCountryRallyT2besiktigad
During the whole process I have been offered lots of advice and encouragement by Raymond Johansson from the Swedish Automobile Sports Federation, SBF and I am very thankful for his support.
