After racing a Peugeot 504 Coupé at the 2024 Dakar Classic, Patrice Auzet and his team will bring a Renault 30 to the 2025 edition.
The cars are restorations of the R30s that Team Gitanes fielded for Georges Houel and Jean-Pierre Gabreau at the 1981 Paris–Dakar Rally. Both drivers ended up retiring due to a rash of mechanical failures: Houel lost the water in his radiator twice and the circuitry shorting out, while Gabreau’s car suffered an engine failure just after the Prologue stage and had to buy a used replacement from a local garage before exiting while in Algeria. Houel also raced the inaugural Dakar Rally in 1979 and the 1980 editions in the R30, which was later acquired by M’Taich El Fodil for the 1987 race.
Once restored, Auzet hopes to paint the car with a livery modelled after that of the two vehicles. El Fodil had used a zebra-themed design.
At his Dakar Classic debut in 2024, Auzet was the co-driver for François-Xavier Bourgois in their 504 Pininfarina Coupé; Auzet had worked on the car as a mechanic in 2023, where he had to rebuild the engine after the Prologue and nursed it to the finish. The 2024 Classic went far better for both as they finished twenty-second overall and won the H3.A group.
The 2024 Dakar Classic, run in support of the Dakar Rally, spans 3–17 January.
