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No less than 603 entries, of which 450 were cars and trucks, start on January 1, 1988, from Versailles on the way to Dakar, at 12,874 kilometers. That tenth edition of the test created by Thierry Sabine (who died in 1987, in a helicopter accident), with such a number of entries, was difficult to manage. The number of participants meant that the last of the classification could not start before noon, thus being forced, mathematically, to shoot at night.
On January 4, in the first African stage, in Algiers (Algiers-el Oued), a succession of dunes of 600 kilometers, the difficulty is of such magnitude that, when the sun goes down, about two hundred participants have abandoned.
And four stages later there are only two hundred left in the race. Follow the test. The “anti Dakar”, from their seats in Europe, criticize raids for the accidents, several fatal, that occur. French President Mitterrand confesses his passion for the Dakar, but also that his wife is against the race. The president of the FISA (Federation Internationale du Sport Automobile), the French Jean Marie Balestre, is facing the heads of TSO (Thierry Sabine Organization), with René Metge, director of the event, and Gilbert, the father of Thierry Sabine to the head, and accuses them of not respecting the federative regulations.
But the environment within the race itself is also bad. The end of the stage is gruesome, the men arrive like zombies and, especially for motorcyclists, the layout is torture. Many have to abandon having lost their trucks or assistance cars (which, by regulation, have to participate in the test) sunk in the dunes. René Metge wanted to recover the original spirit of the Dakar, to limit the big factory teams so that the private ones had their chance. But the result is very different. Jean Todt himself, at the helm of the leading team, the Peugeot Talbot Sport, declares: “wanting to limit us, the TSO has set the bar too high. The private and, even less the fans, can no longer continue »
And in front of the survivors, a Finn, a king of ice, the 1981 world rally champion, Ari Vatanen, seems to fly in his Peugeot 405 Turbo 16 Grand Raid despite the fact that a problem in a suspension ball has caused a small fire on the stage of January 9, which his co-driver Bruno Berglund managed to control. On January 17, when the fourteenth stage between Timbuktu and Bamako ends, Vatanen and Berglund are still leading the test with the Peugeot 405, with the number 204. Everything seems to presage that he will repeat his triumph of the previous year, in a Peugeot 205 T-16 Grand Raid, on that occasion with Bernard Giroux as co-pilot.
In the early morning of January 18, René Metge, returning to the bivouac, crosses over the bridge that crosses the Niger and connects with Bamako, with the 405 from Vatanen driven, he will say later, “by a target.” There is nothing out of the ordinary, as two hours after starting it may be a team member who performs the last checks before the race starts again.
But little by little a rumor springs up: “Vatanen’s 405 has been stolen.” Jean Todt, head of the Peugeot team, reportedly received a call announcing that the 405 was “hijacked” and that if they wanted to recover it they would have to deposit a large sum of money. The rally awakens, the mechanics put the finishing touches on the cars, the drivers put on their overalls…, and Vatanen drives desperately while Todt does not separate himself from his satellite phone.
Journalists bombard with their questions How can a racing car disappear from the crowded campsite with the noise coming from its exhaust? And that, as if that were not enough, that it does not start like any street car, since it requires a complex process to get going. All the living forces of the country, the police, the army itself, the organizers, the journalists …, scour the area in search of the missing 405.
Each competitor has their start time marked with a tolerated margin of 30 minutes. For every minute beyond the scheduled time, one minute is penalized. The service truck carrying the parts for Vatanen’s Peugeot does not start. The timekeepers warn the team that the minutes are passing and no exceptions will be made. They could start and wait, but they don’t want to, they prefer to be out of the race.
Suddenly the news spreads. The 405 has been found in a field 2 kilometers from the starting point. It is intact, with full tanks and ready to devour the kilometers of the day’s stage. But it will not be so. Time has passed and he is out of the running. Peugeot does not appeal this decision. Finally it will be another Peugeot, the 204 from Kankkunen, who arrives at the head of the Dakar beach.
From there, there will be many theories. Some unlikely, such as that Jean Marie Balestre would have “commissioned” the kidnapping, given his wishes that Peugeot should not continue participating in the Dakar. Another, no less bizarre, is that of Fenouil, which seems to be taken from an album by Michael Vaillante, the pilot created by cartoonist Jean Graton.
The theory of Fenouil
Jean Claude Morellet, known as Fenouil and also “like the madman of the desert”, a true pioneer, as a participant in motorcycle, raids, writer, organizer and inspirer of events such as the Rally of the Pharaohs or Dakar itself, put forward a theory in “Dakar l’envers du décor”, one of his books. This theory would have been told by several protagonists of the Dakar, among them the late Ulrich Brehmer, at that time the patron of the Mitsubishi team. At the end of the stage, the Peugeot men noticed a major engine failure (a cracked block or crankshaft). By regulation their change was prohibited (they were sealed before the start of the test). Desperate, the mechanics had pushed the car aside so they could work quietly.
And the disqualification of the assistance truck had been provoked since, outside of the race, it was not controlled which parts it loaded inside. A plane carrying a new engine had landed at 3 a.m. in Bamako, but it was not possible to connect it to the gearbox. So they decide to take the 405 to a garage away from prying eyes to make, or at least try, the corresponding adaptation. But the job could not be finished on time. And the lead seals? Fenouil goes back to an event that had occurred at the TSO headquarters a fortnight before the start of the Dakar: the leads and clamps used to make the verification seals had been stolen. One can imagine that there was one or, perhaps, several teams that had been made with these seals, in such a way that, in a “discreet” way, they could remake.
The official version of Peugeot
The official version of Peugeot is that the 405 would have been stolen by a gangster group from Bamako. But the author did not know anything about the car and it would have stopped two kilometers later without gasoline, and he did not know that the two injection pumps had to be activated to power the engine. So, he would have chosen to go to a house to make the phone call, asking for the ransom. A Bamako resident, passing by on his moped, had discovered the car and called the authorities.
Ari Vatanen’s position
Ari Vatanen, who had happened to the 405 in Bamako, has been asked on a few occasions. His answer has always been the same: “It was stolen. He would never have allowed a drill. Also, I lost the race because of this matter. Given the character and renowned integrity of the Finnish driver, this is a confirmation of the Peugeot version. But, in any case, it is difficult to put limits to the imagination, and less in the desert.
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