As you can probably guess from its name, the DAF Museum in Eindhoven has an extensive collection of trucks and other vehicles from the company’s history. Well, those and a Land Rover.

In mid-March, the museum added a Land Rover 110 that was used as a rapid assistance car by the DAF factory team at the 1986 Paris–Dakar Rally. It will remain on display until September.

Theo van de Rijt drove the #504 in the 1986 Dakar with Kees van Loevezijn as his navigator. They shadowed Jan de Rooy’s DAF FAV 3600 TurboTwin until he retired with a broken front axle.

Since they went ahead of the trucks to the stage finish, there were times where the team tinkered and performed maintenance on the Land Rover while waiting. At one point, the DAF mechanics had just finished draining the engine oil when the trucks arrived. Even though work on the engine was nowhere near complete, they quickly left the Land Rover behind to service de Rooy. By the time the crew got back to the 110 and finished it up, they inadvertently cut a few corners that caused the engine’s pistons to break.

The engine was eventually rebuilt and the Land Rover restored for use as a media car. Journalists from Truckstar and 4WD magazines were entrusted with the 110 for the 1988 Dakar. Tragically, van de Rijt and van Loevezijn rolled their DAF in this race, killing the latter; the accident ended the DAF rally program while the Truck category was removed from the Dakar card for 1989.

27 years after that fateful Dakar, Geert De Jong found the Land Rover in dilapidated condition in 2015. With the help of van de Rijt, who now volunteers at the DAF museum, he spent the next ten years restoring the 110 to its 1986 appearance.

Featured image credit: Geert De Jong