A friend of mine is a rally driver.

He has driven factory cars for Subaru. He drove in LA at the X games a few years ago.

He has prepped several cars of his own. He strips out unneeded parts (and sells them) then he strips the rest of the car and adds continuous welds on all seams, he buys extra strong wheels from England, he adds a full belly pan made of the plastic used to line hockey rinks. He changes a lot of the mechanical parts to heavy duty stuff, and builds his own electrical systems with switches and fuses in the cockpit.

See - Snorace - on youtube to see what a 740 can do - basically stock.

See - Volvo Rawhide - as well to see 740s doing some offload traveling.

I think both videos will impress you.