Wednesday, May 03, 2017
If you think a mass-produced car isn’t strong enough to drag tonnes of weight, think again.
A Porsche Cayenne has successfully pulled an Airbus A380, the world’s largest passenger plane, at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, establishing a new world record for the heaviest aircraft tow by a production vehicle.
The car has a tow rating of only under 8,000 pounds but it managed to drag a huge aircraft weighing 285 tonnes over a distance of 42 metres at Air France’s engineering hangar.
The 60,000-square-metre hangar has been built to house the Airbus A380 and cater to the engineering and maintenance work for the Air France fleet.
The event, confirmed by Porsche Cayenne and Air France in press statements, highlighted a striking contrast of appearance between the two machines: a 4.8-metre long vehicle towing a massive aircraft that’s 73 metres long.
“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 go a bit beyond what our customers might expect — they’re designed to be tough,” said Richard Payne, a technician at Porsche GB who drove the sports utility vehicle, in a statement released on Monday.
The feat impressed Guinness World Records adjudicator Pravin Patel. “I’ve verified amazing record attempts during my time as a Guinness World adjudicator — watching a Porsche Cayenne tow one of the largest aircraft in the world definitely ranks as among the most spectacular,” Patel said.
By Cleofe Maceda Senior Web Reporter
Gulf News 2017. All rights reserved.
