Jaguar Land Rover South Africa is back with yet another record in the bag. This time its the Range Rover Sport which takes the titles as the fastest 4×4 in South Africa.
Recently Jaguar Land Rover SA spent some time on the 4 900m long runway at Upington airport to see how fast some of its cars are. The Jaguar F-Type R coupe was the first to break a record as the fastest production car in South Africa, and then a few of the sedans like the XF and XJ each made history.
This time however, it was the turn of the big Range Rover Sport to go down one of the longest runways in the world. Powered by a supercharged V8 engine, the Range Rover Sport completed the flying kilometre with an average speed of 250.62kph. Not bad at all for a big and luxurious SUV which boasts serious offroad ability! The Range Rover Sport is now the proud title holder of fastest petrol-powered SUV. We know all about just how potent this SUV is when we put it head to head against the mighty BMW X5 M50d in a drag race.
Land Rover wasn’t done yet though as it was then the turn of the diesel-powered 4.4-litre V8 Range Rover Sport. With 250kW and 740Nm, it’s not exactly a slouch either and it too broke the record for fastest diesel-powered SUV in SA with a speed of 213.53kph.Thanks to its lightweight aluminium architecture,we would go as far as saying that the Range Rover Sport is the only car in the world that can safely do 250km/h, carve up mountain passes, easily scale rocky trails, cross water as deep as 850mm, and tow a horse box, said Lisa Mallett, Marketing and Communications Director at Jaguar Land Rover South Africa and sub-Sahara Africa.
I hope the antics by Jaguar Land Rover SA inspires other brands to try break records. I’m pretty confident that a certain BMW X5 M would fare pretty well in a top end run… Let’s hope BMW SA comes to the party.