Enter the Wildcat

A rugged 4x4 climbs to the top of a desert sand dune, tackling the ridge effortlessly before descending the other side at high speed and leaving the vehicles behind it in a plume of dust.

This is the kind of scene you might expect to see in the Dakar, a desert rally race once held across Africa and now based in South America. But a company in Devon is hoping to make scenarios such as this more common to army combat operations by becoming the first UK company to introduce a military vehicle originally designed for motorsport.

UK troops have been in Afghanistan for nearly a decade now, and the threat of guerrilla insurgents and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) has led to a trend for transport with more armour. Supacat thinks it’s time to go the other way.

’Military vehicles are becoming bigger, heavier and more protected and, as a result, more expensive,’ said Jamie Clarke, sales and marketing manager for the company, which is also behind other vehicles now used by the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), including the Jackal and the Coyote.