Add a 14.9 km-long Alpine ski course, a Range Rover Sport and ex-‘The Stig’ Ben Collins, and you know things are going to go downhill, pretty fast.
The ingredients above formed the premise for a challenge that saw the RRS tackling a downhill route with 75% gradients and at speeds of up to 155 km/h. Following the route used by skiers on the tough Inferno Mürren, the SUV managed to complete the 2,170 metre descent – traversing snow, ice, loose rock, mud, broken asphalt, grass and gravel – in 21 minutes and 36 seconds.
The ex-Stig said that the test was one of the hardest he’d faced in his driving career. “The route was insane and certainly the toughest course I’ve ever completed. It challenged you with every kind of obstacle this side of molten lava and as conditions go, it was about as bad as it gets – torrential weather mixed with cliffs, trees, all kinds of stuff you don’t really want to crash into,” Collins said.
“There could only be one winner in the challenge – the mountain or the car. The key to the run was precision, being able to maintain speed and carry that speed down the hill in the way the skiers can do, carving through the turns,” he added.
“I had to use the Terrain Response because the grass was like an ice rink and it really got me out of trouble. To be honest I abused it and it just kept on going – I couldn’t have asked for a better machine to do the job,” Collins enthused.
The feat was achieved in a 5.0 litre supercharged V8 Range Rover Sport, kept standard apart from the essential safety additions of a roll cage and reinforced tyres.
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Range Rover every year still voted the most problematic car in the UK with highest warranty claims of all cars.
But in Malaysia, it is considered luxury car. Pay RM1 mil for breakdowns every month