- 94
- Italy
Manufacturer: DAF Trucks
Country: Netherlands
Gran Turismo body class: race-modified car
Gran Turismo engine class: Turbo
Layout: 4WD
Power: 1220 hp (2x610)
Torque: 4700 N⋅m
(2x2350)Displacement: 2x11600 cm³
Weight: 10500 kg
Background:
How do you make a ten ton truck go over 200 km/h on sand? How about two 11.6 L diesel engines and six turbos?
Dutch trucker Jan de Rooy, after a long experience driving for DAF in the Truck class at the Paris-Dakar, convinced DAF that he could design a winner - an overall winner, that could beat even the Peugeots and Porsches.
He designed a simple but sturdy spaceframe aluminum chassis, with two monstruos coal-belching 11.6 L I6 biturbo diesels mounted side by side and powering an axle each. A fairing for the mechanics and a standard truck cab (and driver's side cigarette holder for chain-smoking de Rooy) completed the machine. The result was a 1000 hp monster dubbed the FAV 3600 4x4 TurboTwin.
Inside insanity.
They entered it in the 1986 race, but it broke its front axle at the fourth-to-last stage and was forced to retire. DAF and de Rooy did not let this deter them, and they returned in 1987 with the TurboTwin II upgrade. De Rooy won first place in the Truck class, hours ahead of second place, but only 11th overall. Good, but not good enough.
Close, but no cigar.
For the 1988 race, the engines were upgraded with an extra turbo each (a larger turbine feeding the other two), for a combined output of 1220 hp and 4700 N⋅m of torque. Wheels were replaced with 24″ alloys, and a new body was designed. Performance was insane for such a heavy vehicle: top speed was slightly above 240 km/h, and it could accelerate 0-100 km/h in about 8 seconds.
The new truck was called the 95 TurboTwin X1 and entrusted to de Rooy. One of the TurboTwin IIs from the previous year was upgraded with the new body shell and wheels, renamed 95 TurboTwin X2, and given to DAF's second driver Theo van de Rijt.
The "twins".
At the 8th stage, the X1 was in third place overall, beating even the two Peugeot 405 T16s, when the X2 rolled over at high speed, cartwheeling six times and throwing navigator Kees van Loevezijn out of the cab. The truck was destroyed, the navigator died and the other two occupants were seriously injured. DAF retired from the race (which would eventually be won by Peugeot works driver Juha Kankunnen), and withdrew from motorsports entirely for over a decade. For his part, de Rooy would not race again until 2002.
The aftermath of the X2's deadly crash. Note how little is left of the cab.
Following the accident, trucks were removed from competition for the 1989 edition and only allowed to run as support to cars and motorcycles, and came back a year later with a speed limit and a demand for truck teams to tone it the f:censored:k down before someone else was killed.
Why add it to Gran Turismo: we see here Jan de Rooy going head-to-head with Ari Vatanen (that year's almost certain overall winner - until, unthinkably, someone stole his 405 in Bamako, Mali) and overtaking him:
Legend says Vatanen then repeatedly punched his steering wheel in frustration
. Jan de Rooy wanted to build a winner and, by God, he built a winner.The 95 TurboTwin, like the Group B specials we all know and love, is the finest product of another time, a time when people in motorsports were still intrigued (rather than unsettled) to find out just how fast you could make a technically (barely?
) road legal race car. Like with Group B, it turned out that how fast was too fast, and like with Group B we have to turn to literal museum pieces to relive those thrills. And for most of us, the closest (and safest!) we'll ever get to do that is, of course, Gran Turismo.That said, while the X2 is probably still a pile of scrap somewhere in the Ténéré desert, the X1 lives as an exhibit at the DAF museum in Eindhoven, Netherlands, kept in running condition and occasionally driven by de Rooy's son Gerard, so it wouldn't be hard to model it for the game. They should totally make it belch black smoke, too
.Do those hay bales look familiar to you?
What am I asking for: premium model of the X1, interiors included, optionally with the X2 livery available as a color variant. And a sooty diesel exhaust please!
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