Land Rover Discovery tows road-train in NT
Truck drivers rejoice – this new luxurious rig is capable of hauling 110-tonne loadsWhen it comes to high-profile vehicular stunts, Land Rover’s list is longer than most.
The Indian-owned British company spends millions of dollars every year on extravagant PR exploits, such as when Top Gear star ‘the Stig’ took on the Inferno volcano in a 375kW Range Rover Sport, or when Bear Grylls tested Land Rover seats while hurtling to earth in a parachute.
There was a Nurburgring lap record in there for good measure, a Discovery Sport towing a 100-tonne train in Switzerland, and who could forget when hundreds of Land Rovers were scuttled in a massive container ship… No, wait, that last one wasn't planned… Moving on.
The latest stunt took place in Australia and involved the new Land Rover Discovery (Review: 75/100) towing a 110-tonne road-train. For our overseas readers, a road-train is a very long lorry or truck, in this instance a seven-trailer assembly.
What does this prove? Number one, Land Rover has a massive marketing budget and, secondly, the Discovery Sport's 3.0-litre turbo-diesel engine can tow considerably more than its 3500kg listed weight.
The 100-metre long road train was dragged 16km along the Lasseter Highway in the Northern Territory by a Disco running the Td6 engine, which has an output of 190kW and 600Nm. It reached a top speed of 44km/h… and produced zero road kill.
Interestingly, Australian law stipulates that the longest permissible road-train can ‘only’ be 53.5 metres long, which meant Land Rover had to attain special dispensation to work seven trailers measuring 100 metres long. The 12-tonne rig was also required to operate the trailers' hydraulic brakes.
By comparison, we've also done heavy-duty towing with the Discovery Sport -- a 2000kg caravan which would test even the most experienced drivers.
John Bilato, the boss of haulage specialist G&S Transport, was the man behind the wheel for the outback road-train stunt and he reckons the whole shebang went down without a hitch
"When Land Rover first got in touch, I didn't think the vehicle would be able to do it, so I was amazed by how easily the standard Discovery pulled a 110-tonne road-train. And the smoothness of the gear changes under that amount of load was genuinely impressive," he said.
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