Diesel cars are common at the Dakar Rally today, but Ramón Termens made history in 1987 when he and Miguel Prieto scored the first top-ten overall finish for such a vehicle in their Nissan Patrol Fanta Limón. His family confirmed his passing on Thursday.
Termens and Prieto first teamed up in 1986 as Nissan Motorsport formed a partnership with Coca-Cola to field the Patrol in rally raids. Dubbed the Nissan Patrol Fanta Limón to reflect Coca-Cola’s sponsorship, the car featured a 2,800cc four-cylinder turbodiesel engine capable of 146 horsepower with a top speed of 150 km/h. It had already enjoyed success with Prieto and various co-drivers by winning the diesel category at the Tunis Rally and Baja España Aragón, but Termens’ début as the Patrol’s navigator was a coming-out party as he and Prieto won the Rallye des Pharaons outright.
The duo then entered the Paris–Dakar Rally in 1987 as one of two Patrols. The Nissan Fanta Limón team struggled early when their support truck broke down in Stage #2, forcing them to proceed without spare tyres before their #212 team-mates Jorge and Hansi Bäbler were forced to retire after rolling down a dune. Prieto and Termens’ #211 car reached the finish in ninth overall to win the diesel class, while also becoming the first diesel car to place in the top ten.
The #211 was retired shortly after and donated to the Salvador Claret Automobile Collection in Spain. It sat in the museum for three decades before the Nissan Technical Centre Europe discovered it in 2014, receiving it in poor condition due to neglect. The team eventually began an extensive restoration effort with the goal of completion by 2017 to celebrate the thirty-year anniversary of its Dakar effort. Led by Pedro Diaz Illan, a member of the 1987 Dakar team, NTCE finished the project by November 2016.
“The spirit of innovation that was at the heart of Nissan’s entry into the 1987 Paris-Dakar has been all around us as we have completed this project,” said NTCE technician Juan Villegas. “We felt inspired by the memory of that team, which decided to participate in the most challenging race in the world and achieved such success.”
Termens continued to race a Patrol at Dakar into the 1990s, save for a one-off in 1991 where he and Ignacio Bultó finished thirty-eighth in a Range Rover. In 1992, he and Anny-Charlotte Verney, the only woman to race the 24 Hours of Le Mans ten times whose grandfather founded the endurance race, finished twenty-first overall.
His son Francesc Termens has also followed in his footsteps and is a multi-time champion in the Spanish Cross-Country Rally Championship (CERTT) across the T1, T2, and Diesel categories. In 2006, he won the FIA Bajas World Cup in T2.
In 2022, the younger Termens raced a 1986 Patrol modelled after his father’s Rallye des Pharaons winner at the Dakar Classic, an navigation-based event adjacent to the Dakar Rally for pre-2000 vehicles. He finished fifty-ninth overall.
“Going into the Dakar Classic with a restored vehicle, which my own father made, is really exciting on a sporting level, but on a personal level it is the best,” said Francesc prior to the race. “The vehicle will be painted with the same blue, red, and white colors with which he and Miguel Prieto won the Pharaons Rally in 1986. They achieved an absolute victory and this is the best way to pay tribute to their entire sporting lives.”