Company Profile: Meet Drakart
Hesperia, CA is home to one of the more unique off-road vehicle builders we’ve yet to encounter. In the event you’ve never heard of Drakart, let us summarize their niche in a single sentence: Specialty race equipment powered by high performance motorcycle engines.
Until now their primary focus has been buggies, sand rails and rally equipment but their latest creation places them smack dab into the side-by-side scene.
Around since 1990, the first Drakart single-seat car was built, designed, and raced across the pond in Europe. Drakart vehicles were originally built in Europe from 1990 to 1997 by a man named Alan Fricker and quickly became the European automatic transmission leaders in the super light 500cc and 600cc categories.
Success was good but Alan Fricker was fascinated by North American wide-open spaces and decided it was time to take his operation on the road- er in this case on the boat. He settled in Canada in 1997. The Drakart was then adapted for and made available to the North American market and built up in Canada from 1998 to 2001.
Then in 2001, Drakart Inc moved to Lake Elsinore, California so as to better serve the American off-road community. In 2008, Drakart began designing new cars for the Dakar Rally.
Now in its prototype phase, their latest machine- the Scorpion, is hoping to do to the side-by-side scene what the Drakart did all those years ago. Boasting gull-wing doors (all the exotics do) and a Gen-2 Suzuki Hayabusa 210 horse engine, power is delivered to the rear wheels via chain.
Other goodies include a five-link set-up rear suspension configuration, tubular trailing arm and a chassis good for 22-inches of travel via Fox Racing shocks with dual-rate springs and cross-overs. Front travel clocks in at 18-inches.
We don’t have pricing info yet but as is always the case in these situations, strong enough demand would justify larger production runs and hence lower the MSRP. In the mean time, you can check out this and the rest of Drakart’s creations at their official site.
