Nissan Navara/Frontier Build For Dakar 2015

Yup...2015...

No, we're not in '14 yet but builds for Dakar '15 are already underway.  One of these happens to be a Nissan being built in South Africa for Johan van Staden.  This Dakar spec vehicle it is being built by Stuart Thompson Graeme Thornton and Achim Bergman, also of South Africa who built the recent BMW X3 which took the last win of the South Africa Off Road Championship in '13.

I'll let those who are more technically inclined and knowledgeable than I to pick apart just what the particular parts of this vehicle are in terms of shock placement, suspension geometry, etc. What I can tell you is that the little grey box in the rear of the cab is an air conditioning unit sourced from Glyn Hall at Hallspeed of S.A. (the former Nissan Motorsports manager and now overseer of the Toyota team heading to Dakar), the engine in the Frontier/Navara is a V8 (VK56?) and that the fuel cell is 480 liters--almost 127 gallons!!   Are those shocks Reigers??  I believe I spy a sequential gear shifter--a Sadev??  Are the rear links beefy enough?

I am unsure of what the rear diff is though the previous Navaras built for Dakar and RallyRaid events have replaced the standard diff with that from a Nissan Patrol and they may have done the same here.  The have also gone from a rear leaf spring on the stock Navara/Frontier with a coilover setup (4 link?) and widened the front track (though not by a ton and those arms look a little wimpy for my tastes) and they have sourced some fiberglass parts that I haven't seen available anywhere as well.

Please chime in with what you see here in terms of the design and parts used.  I'm interested in what people with more knowledge of these builds than I think about it.  I've reached out to try and get more details of the build and will try to update this if I get more info.