Sophisticated Buggery: We Love This Crazy Dakar Rolls-Royce

Would you get a load of this absolute unit. In an era when everything from chintzy “Sports Activity Vehicles” to vintage Porsches has been lifted, thrown on knobbies, and packaged for mall-crawling duty, it’s refreshing to know that real heroes existed before the hype.

This is one such hero: A Rolls-Royce Corniche commissioned by a French playboy for a full-frontal assault on the Paris-Dakar rally. 

Thierry de Montcorgé commissioned this ’70s Rolls for the 1981 event that, as ever, traced a route from Paris to Dakar, Senegal’s capital. The Corniche’s silken heart was swapped for 5.7 liters of grumbly Chevy V-8 power, boosting output by roughly 100 horses, while the chassis was refitted with sturdy bits from a contemporary Toyota Land Cruiser. 

Perhaps the most impressive: the bodywork was replaced with lightweight plastic panels, then coated in upper-crust sponsorships. Christian Dior’s “Jules” fragrance bestowed it’s name and likeness to the car, which met its fate toward the end of the event, when… well who put that damned tree out in the desert anyway?

The Dior sponsorship was secured via a lunch with Dior himself, according to de Montcorgé. Motorsport Magazine has a wonderful little profile of de Montcorgé, which you can read here, that’s full of little tidbits like that one. It’s full of details about how the car was conceived, built, and paid for. Go give it a read.

At a recent auction, Jules sold for an astonishing $630,000, certainly making it the most-valuable rally raid Rolls on planet earth. What a car.