I wanted to do a Unimog . . . . .                I also wanted to do a Sauber C9 tribute.

In the end I thought it'd be fun to bring my passion for off-highway working vehicle design together with my ongoing fascination with iconic race cars.

Once I got started, I began to find uncanny visual similarities between the Sauber C9 and the equivalent era Unimog - side window shape in particular is a dead ringer, as is the no-nonsense function-led aesthetic which is prevalent in both.

The more I've got into this, the more I've wondered why Mercedes have never done a special edition "silver arrows" show vehicle - and why they've never fancied entering off road endurance events. Seeing something like this thunder across the Dakkar would be awesome.

With this one, I've probably enjoyed the modelling slightly more than the visualisation - the Unimog is such a brutal upright shape it's hard to find "beautiful" view angles. Damn fun to model all the various technical details - and decide where racecar DNA ends and off-road work-horse begins.