09:41PM - 20.06.'16
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News Source: autoblog.com
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To highlight the new Discovery Sport's towing capabilities – and just how much more capable it is than the LR2/Freelander it replaces – Land Rover had the specialists at Aquarius Railroad Technologies fit the three-row sport-ute with a set of rail wheels and hooked it up to a train of three luxury carriages totaling 119 tons. That's considerably more than the 2.75 tons it's rated for, some 60 times the vehicle's own weight, or roughly the mass of a Boeing 757 passenger jet. But as you can see from this video, the Landie had little trouble pulling the load, moving it down the tracks in Switzerland to cross the River Rhine on the 935-foot-long Hemishofen bridge. The stunt was something of a re-creation of the feat the same company achieved in 1989 when the first-generation Discovery pulled a train of cars in Plymouth, UK. Only this time Land Rover did without the Disco I's low-range gearbox. Instead, the 2.0-liter four-cylinder diesel engine (which we don't get in the US), rated at 177 horsepower and 317 pound-feet of torque, is mated to a nine-speed automatic transmission, and assisted by high-tech gadgetry including semi-autonomous All Terrain Progress Control and Tow Assist systems. It's not the first time we've seen this sort of publicity stunt. Aside from the aforementioned Discovery I, we've seen everything from a Smart Forfour converted into a rail car to a VW Touareg pulling a 747. We wouldn't recommend trying any of these stunts at home, but it's impressive just the same to see what a modern automobile is capable of. |
