With next year being the 40-year anniversary of Tatra’s Dakar Rally debut, R&D director Radomír Smolka dreams of seeing the company on the top step of the podium once again. While he is realistic and knows they can’t afford to revive their factory rally raid program, he’s still keen on a new challenger from Tatra.

Speaking with the iDNES podcast Industrial, Smolka explained he “has a vision of a new competition special. Would Tatra build a new one? Probably not on our own, but in cooperation with a partner team.”

Tatra has won the Dakar Rally’s Truck category six times with Karel Loprais from 1988 to 2001. Since 2014, the Czech manufacturer maintains a factory partnership with Buggyra ZM Racing, who fields the Tatra Buggyra Evo3 and Tatra Phoenix. At the 2025 Dakar, the Phoenix finished 11th in class with Karel Poslední while Martin Šoltys was 14th in the Evo3. Another Tatra, the funky-looking FF7 from Fesh Fesh, placed ninth with Tomáš Vrátný.

Loprais Team, now led by Karel’s nephew Aleš, fielded two Tatra 815s at the Dakar Classic and plans to bring a third Tatra to the 2026 race. Aleš, on the other hand, races for IVECO.

While Tatra enjoys the alliance with Buggyra, the company also wants to make a bigger splash for the anniversary in 2026. In June, CEO Kristijan Fiket said Dakar is Tatra’s “calling card” and proclaims should expect “to be surprised” by what they have in store.

Smolka also noted he and Fiket hasn’t sat down to discuss it yet, but Lukáš Taneček has been busy drafting up a concept truck in the meantime. An industrial designer for Tatra, Taneček was responsible for creating the interior and exterior for the Tatra Force 3 line of military and fire trucks; his work earned him a Red Dot Design Award in 2024.

According to Smolka, the rally concept drawn by Taneček is based on the Tatra Force but has a bonneted cabin design rather than cab-over.

“Everything is underway,” Smolka continued. “We know what we want and what we would like. Now, we have to find the resources for that and we have to make agreements with partners. We’ll see how it goes, because I’d really like to experience Tatra winning the Dakar one more time.”

When asked if a factory team is a possibility, he said it’s “certainly not in the game. It’s probably not in our financial capabilities.”

Industrial podcast with Smolka

Featured image credit: Jennifer Lindini / ASO