VW's off road racer

Each year a host of thrill-seeking motorists descend upon the Baja desert to take part in a 1,000 mile sprint from Southern California to Mexico, and they do it in all kinds of rugged off-road extreme machines.

This year VW has built a beast to cope with the toughest of challenges and it's pretty clean too.

Taking part in the highest ranked Trophy Truck class the heavily refined Touareg off-roader is powered by a massive 5.5-liter V12 TDI Twin Turbo diesel engine with 550 horsepower and 850Nm of torque.

LA fans were lucky enough to see the tuned Touareg in the metal before it took to the sand.