Is lore time
The year is 1984, and the car community witnesses one of the most interesting new cars in a long time: The Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyager. A car with the space of a cargo van that could fit in a standard garage. one which could comfortably hold 8 people, yet which drove like a sedan. It could pretty much do anything! With fold-up seats and sliding doors, it was truly new. And different. And awesome.
Bazard loved it. They wanted this. They wanted to make this. They wondered why they hadn’t thought of this sooner. It was brilliant. And perfect. And right up their alley, considering like 2/5 of their lineup was vans anyway. And then they saw Chrysler’s sales figures…
So, what did Bazard do to make a van that would stand out from Chrysler’s (and later, the Astro and Aerostar)? They went to Senegal. In an earlier round, I mentioned that they were expanding operations into Africa and South America. As it turns out, this had gone quite well; they now had several African and South American subsidiaries in various countries. designing and building cars for their own nations (and regions). Teams of people, hired and trained from their own country, designing cars to be built in factories in said country. And it was a resounding success; even though the cars weren’t always the most unique, they were still pretty good; and the pride of having a car designed and built right at home sits well with people of any nation.
Bazard wondered if any of these subsidiaries could do something about this; and as it turns out, a designer in Bazard Senegal had already been thinking of a design. Bazard Senegal was already beginning work on a new truck/van design, and one designer had already been looking for a way to merge the hardcore utility of this chassis into something that might work as a family car.
A minivan…with the chassis of a truck. A family car…that can take an offroad trail. The most versatile car known to man made even more versatile. Bazard, about as excited as a kid on Christmas, merged that Senegal team with one of Bazard’s American teams, doubled their budgets, and gave them all the time they needed to create what would later become the next generation B-series.
Bazard used the fact that the Dakar was made in Senegal to boost marketing in the US, using this to symbolize the toughness and reliability in the car’s blood. However, the American marketing was usually created exclusively by Americans…who, though well meaning, didn’t always know as much about Sengal as they thought they did.
This generation of the B-series lineup, released in 1988 in Senegal and 1990 in the US, comprised of a van, truck, and the Dakar Minivan. Unlike the truck and van, the minivan was given a name, rather than a string of letters, and was marketed to civilians as well as to companies.
Yet because it was based on a truck chassis, it came with all the advantages of a truck. The Dakar was available in the same 4 trim levels as the commercial trucks, from premium-level appointments for long-distance cruising, to really cheap, stripped down budget models. It also came with all 3 transverse-mounted engine choices available on this platform, with the efficient I4, reliable V6, or (available only upon preorder) a monstrous <200hp V8 engine, usually built for top-level C-series trucks and higher.
Alongside a traditional FWD, Bazard also offered it with an optional Four-Wheel-Drive system- which, because they couldn’t make 4WD work with a transverse engine, was actually a modified AWD system sourced from Centara’s Tormenta- Centara’s only mark on the car. They also offered offroad and/or snow tires as an optional extra (pre-installed, or separate), as well as a manual locking differential.
Bazard exaggerated the difficulty of this trail a bit, but it was still pretty impressive that a minivan managed to scale it.
It was a sort of precursor to the SUV craze, where 15 years later the first crossovers would be trying to combine exactly the same traits. Bazard, with Bazard Senegal, had built a minivan that really could work on-and-off road; they thought they had come up with the most versatile car design ever made, and for a low fair price too. Who wouldn’t want a car that could do everything, they thought?
The version provided is a mid-trim Dakar, with the trim callsign being “BMH6” (B for B-series, M for Minivan, H for “high” trim (second highest), and 6 for 6-cylinder). It comes with the V6, the Four-Wheel-Drive system, an 8-track and cassette player (base models only had the 8 track), and ABS. Not quite the highest trim, but a pretty good show of what it could do.
From left to right: A Dakar van (BMM6), a BTF8 truck, and a BVL4 van.