The SCG 008 will race NORRA’s Mexican 1000 in May with a pair of rally veterans at the helm. Darren Skilton will drive while Willem Avenant serves as navigator.

Skilton has enjoyed tremendous success in SCORE, winning a pair of Class 2 titles and the Baja 1000 six times. He’s raced the Dakar Rally eight times and is currently the organizer of the Sonora Rally. Eventually, he became the off-road director for Glickenhaus and has been instrumental in developing the team’s vehicles like the SCG 008.

Avenant is a friend of 131 Off-Road who ran the Dakar in 2025. He and Skilton met for the first time at the 2020 Sonora Rally, and the former has also competed in the event. While Avenant is mainly a bike racer, he has increasingly tried his hand at co-driving as a racing coach for Big Red Racing. He and Bassam Kronfli also won this past season’s Abu Dhabi Baja Challenge title in the T4 class.

Glickenhaus announced the SCG 008 would race NORRA in April. It is a three-seat vehicle that weighs 3,800 pounds and is modeled after the SCG 004. While the 008’s body is inspired by the sports car, Glickenhaus still wanted to ensure it is actually competitive for rallies and other off-road races too.

“The 008 was actually born from an April Fool’s joke,” Skilton noted. “We talked about taking the body of the 004 sports car and placing it on an off-road chassis. When one of the designers mocked it up, the reaction was instant. People loved it.

“It’s a unique car. Very aerodynamic. In rally, with restrictors, that really matters. We didn’t want to build something so exotic that it becomes unattainable. We’re using a lot of American-based parts to keep it accessible.”

NORRA is a bit of a middle ground between traditional desert racing and rally raids. Since Skilton and Avenant are savvy in both, the team wants to use the Mexican 1000 to gauge how the 008 fares. If things work out, they’d like to take it to races like the Baja 1000 and Dakar Rally; SCG is also working on the hydrogen-based HFC Boot for a Baja 1000 entry this year.

“Our goal really is just to go down and finish,” Skilton continued. “It’s the first race the car’s entered. We’re still developing it. We wanted a real test by fire before we release these cars to customers.

“I wanted to do it in a rally setting to see if this thing is capable of going to Dakar.”

Featured image credit: Justin W. Coffey / West x 1000