Peugeot Sport, peopled by the masterminds behind the record-breaking 208 T16 Pikes Peak racer, which - in the hands of driver extraordinaire, Sébastien Loeb - blasted up the US mountain in 8m 13.878s last year, has announced it will return to the Dakar rally in 2015, a quarter of a century after it last competed.
The French firm has an enviable record on the old, African-based Paris-Dakar, winning the event outright four times out of four entries as an official manufacturer in the years 1987-1990; the first two years in the stunning 205 T16s (although only after Ari Vatanen's 405 T16 Grand Raid was nicked from a service area in the Malian capital of Bamako while leading the event in 1988), the latter two triumphs provided by the equally fierce 405 T16s.
As a rally raid, it might now have shifted continents to South America, due to security concerns, but the Dakar is still a monstrously tough endurance competition covering 10,000km of harsh terrain over two weeks. Who better, then, to drive the 2008 DKR entries than Spanish all-round rally legend and 2010 Dakar victor, Carlos Sainz, and a man who has won it five times on motorcycles but is now shifting to four wheels, Frenchman Cyril Despres.
Peugeot Sport will buddy up with Total and Red Bull, the same companies that backed Loeb's awesome 208 T16 PP, in preparation for the 2015 Dakar, which will be held in January. And the mood in camp is certainly bullish, as Maxime Picat, Peugeot's CEO, is not mincing his words: "We are perfectly aware that the Dakar is a very difficult event but our aim is nonetheless to win at the first attempt in 2015."
Anything else?
If, like us, you're pretty bloody vexed that this historic announcement is accompanied by just one of those infuriating 'photo-in-the-dark' teaser shots of the 2008 DKR, panic not. All will be revealed at the Beijing Motor Show on April 20.