As records go, this one is pretty amazing indeed: the Porsche Cayenne has set a new record for ‘heaviest aircraft pull by a production car’ by towing an Airbus jumbo jet.
Not impressed? Well, what if we told you that the car used was a completely stock diesel Cayenne with four-wheel drive, and that the Airbus A380 it towed was more than 100 times heavier than it?
The record was dreamed up by Porsche GB technician Richard Payne who, presumably after quite a bit of number-crunching, found out that an unmodified Cayenne would be brawny enough to pull an entire plane.
To test it out, Porsche booked out the runway at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport and the A380 was supplied courtesy of Air France, with the Cayenne able to tug the 285-tonne plane 42 metres up the tarmac.
Richard said: “We don’t usually go this far to test the limits of our cars, but I think today we got pretty close. I could tell that it was working hard but the Cayenne didn’t complain and just got on with it. My mirrors were quite full of Airbus, which was interesting.”
The only change made to the Cayenne was the addition of a special tow hook which attached to the car’s regular tow bar, and after the record was complete it was repeated for good measure with a less torquey Cayenne Turbo S.
Pravin Patel, the Guinness World Records adjudicator, said: “I’ve verified some amazing record attempts during my time, but watching a Porsche Cayenne tow one of the largest aircrafts in the world definitely ranks as among the most spectacular.”
