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Has a sidecar ever finished the Paris to Dakar Rally? Did Ton Van Heuten the then sidecar motocross world champion finish and complete the rally in the 70s or early 80s. It may have been on a 1000cc Yamaha powered Wasp or E.M.L?
Regards.........John Wolverson.

hi john ,my brain cell is just about worn out but i'm sure a swiss or swedish team finished the dakar seem to think it could have been a suzuki road bike engine .



jack
the boys tour starts in croatia

John Wolverson wrote:Has a sidecar ever finished the Paris to Dakar Rally? Did Ton Van Heuten the then sidecar motocross world champion finish and complete the rally in the 70s or early 80s. It may have been on a 1000cc Yamaha powered Wasp or E.M.L?
Regards.........John Wolverson.

This thread answers some of your questions...
http://www.sidecarcross.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3031

Cheers,
Eric Whitney

Hallo friends

The only sidecarteam that finished the Dakar in regular terms was the german team Roth / Peschel on a 1100 Suzuki in 1983.

Best regards

Urs

[quote="Urs Kaiser"]Hallo friends

The only sidecarteam that finished the Dakar in regular terms was the german team Roth / Peschel on a 1100 Suzuki in 1983.

Best regards

Urs[/quote]

No way!! I'm 100% sure that there was a team from Belgium that did finish Paris-Dakar on a sidecar (with a little help from Thierry Sabin).
It was a friend of my colleque, tommorrow I'll give you their names

The Belgium rider who finished the Daker (actally at that time PARIS-CAIRO) was Geert DeVoldere who borrowed /rented/got sponsored by previous Belgium contender and at present still in business as a succesfull Suzuki bikedealer HERMAN VERBOVEN.
Geert finished within the regular time and reached Cairo with mechanic Danny from Belgium.(mechanic of Daniel Willemsen for the past 4 years).

Also reached Dakar on a sidecar Wasp/Yamaha TR1 was Ton van Heugten assisted by passenger Frits Kiggen in 1983 season. During one of the stages they had mechanical (bended frontfork) on their Wasp, but the frontfork was flown-in from Holland, but came 1 day too late to fix the bike in order to stay in competition/classification.
The team decided to continue to Dakar and reached the finish at LAC ROSE in Dakar.out of ranking due to previous mentionnned fact.)

Urs Kaiser wrote:...The only sidecarteam that finished the Dakar in regular terms was the german team Roth / Peschel on a 1100 Suzuki in 1983.

This web site has all the results from 1979 to 1985:
http://www.dakardantan.com/
It shows 1983 finishers: Renders / Verboven - EML/Suzuki 1000ccm.
It also shows only one other sidecar entered in 1983: Butzen / Mertens - Yamaha 1000ccm, DNF.

It shows 1982 Roth / Peschel finished on Roth/EML 1100ccm sidecar.

In 2000 Dakar-Cairo Rik DEPREZ / Geert DEVOLDER EML/Suzuki made it to the finish, though using several course bypasses, and an airplane ride with all the others. I guess bypasses were allowed back then, with time penalty.

From everything I've seen, these three are the only sidecars to be official finisher.