Daf Legacy

Well another monster from the past, this one I've seen very close on the Versaille Prologue from the Dakar 88. What a nice truck !! A little bit of history : Daf had entered on the past Dakar, some nice trucks and some real weird as well, with his driver Jan de Rooy. De Rooy owned a Transport Company and was a motocross and Rallycross drives. His palmares is pretty impressive:
Rallycross-Palmares
Dutch International Rallycross Champion 1970, 1971 (1970 and 1971 also National Champion), 1972, 1973 and 1979
Dutch National Rallycross Cup winner for riders with international license in 1980
1973: 4th general Embassy Rallycross EK with 55 DAF Coupe (with Ford BDA engine)
1974: 5th general Embassy Rallycross EK with 55 DAF Coupe and DAF 66m (each with Ford BDA engine)
1979: 2nd general FIA Rallycross EK (Touring Cars) with Ford Escort RS1800
1982: 3rd overall Rallycross FIA European Championship (Division 2) with Audi Quattro

We can see a patern over here already, so the jump to Rally Raid was a matter of time. So in partership with DAF he entered his first Dakar. Overall 67th since in 82 cars and trucks were racing on the same category. From there on he climbed on the standings second place in 82 with the DAF F3300 4x4 "The Bull", winning in 86 on the trucks and finishing 11th overall with the DAF 3600 Turbo Twin II. Not satisfied to his last run, DAF and De Rooy came up with the Mega Monster... the DAF 95 X1 and X2. A sweet looking truck, following the concept of 2 engines, already used on the "Bi-cephalle" 84, on the Turbo Twin series but with way more power we could imagine. The X1 had 2 11.6 litter engines with 3 turbos on each for a total of 1200 Hp and way over 200 Km/h top speed. I remember watching the Dakar in 88 during the Ternere special and watching that truck catch the Peugeot and pass it. I remember some other drivers saying, if this thing starts before you you cannot pass it !!! Sadly De Rooy left the race after the crash of the X2 and the death of his navigator, but everyone knows he would win that Dakar hands down. Here you have a video that shows this beauty and his amazing pass on the sands of the Ternere .

Well a Bus can go fast as well... well sorta...

Another thing from the past... While a kid growing in Brasil, we use to travel mostly by bus. Well planes were expensive and the railways were being phased out - old "Pra frente Brasil" politics. Anyway, I had my first Airplane trip on a Cruzeiro do Sul Caravelle (nice plane - PP-PDX latter crashed), from Rio to Belo Horizonte and got bac by train - a real sweet trip !!! But like I've said, most of the time we drove in dad's VW bug, or we took the bus. The best company to travel, nice GM buses and latter on Scania, was Viacao Cometa. We took the great PD 4104 Morubixaba (middle photo), nice 2 stroker GM bus, A/C, comfortable seats and a sound from heaven. Latter on Cometa used Scania buses with Ciferal bodies called the Papo Amarelo, Jumbo and Turbo Jumbo (loved to ride on the Turbo Jumbo). But the best of thoses came later when the Dinossauro series came (far right photo- what a beauty). What a great bus. Fast, turbo, air suspension, nice looking. All the other series were made by Cometa's CMA and you have the Flecha Azul (blue Arrow) series ... Well I've just got vent that the Dinossauros are going out of the lines and despite the fact they're still great buses, Cometa new owners are moving to boring Mercedes bus with Marcopolo bodies. Well there is a project for the Dinossauro V series (far letf photo) and I cannot agree more that represents the soul of the Cometa heritage. Hope I'll see one of those on the road