With the ten-year anniversary looming in 2025, the Morocco Desert Challenge will introduce a special category for vehicles built at least a decade before the inaugural rally.
On Thursday, race officials informally announced the creation of the Vintage class for cars of at least twenty years and older, meaning 2005 is the latest production year for the upcoming edition. The class will be separate from the main rally categories, though the tentative plan is to let them follow the same route as everyone else. Additional details will be revealed during the race presentation at QFF Eersel‘s shop on 19 September.
Historic rally raids are far from a new concept with events such as the RallyClassics Africa and Pionniers Classic. Some with modern vehicles incorporate vintage categories like NORRA’s Mexican 1000 and NORRA 500 in Baja California. The Africa Eco Race, which runs through Morocco along the Dakar Rally’s old route, débuted a Historic class in 2024 (then called Classic) for pre-2007 cars that alternated between navigation and regularity formats on each stage.
Even the Dakar Rally has a vintage division of its own with the Dakar Classic, a regularity event that runs in conjunction with the main rally. For 2025, the Classic increased its eligibility range to also permit cars built as late as 2005.
Carlos Santaolalla, who won the latest Dakar Classic, entered the Morocco Desert Challenge in April in his Toyota Land Cruiser KZJ95. As the Vintage class did not exist at the time, he was lumped into Cars and Buggies alongside state-of-the-art vehicles like the race-winning Century CR7 and Toyota Hilux Overdrive T1+ machines.
Although 2025 is celebrated as its tenth anniversary, the Morocco Desert Challenge’s lineage dates back to 2008 as the Libya Desert Challenge. It later became the Libya Rally, albeit in Tunisia due to the Libyan civil war, in 2012 before moving to Morocco in 2014. The race assumed its current moniker in 2017.
The 2025 Morocco Desert Challenge is scheduled for 3–12 April, running from Agadir to Ouarzazate across 3,150 kilometres and eight stages. Registration opened on 1 August.
