Video worth watching: Land Rover Discovery Sport pulls a 110 tonne train

Team OD Published: June 18, 2016, 12:24 PM IST

Towing has been one of the defining characteristics of a Land Rover. Since the days of Land Rover Defender Series II and IIA, the vehicles were modified to run on rails for maintenance errands. The launch of the original Discovery during the late 1980s was quite notable. Land Rover modified the original Discovery and made it tow a series of carriages in Plymouth just to showcase the capability of its new 200Tdi diesel engine.

Land Rover recently repeated this feat but this time with their new Discovery Sport. Having a certified maximum towing weight of 2.5 tonnes, the standard SUV recently towed three luxury train carriages weighing more than 100 tonnes along a railway track. A 10km railway track journey through the Rhine region of northern Switzerland was the testing ground for the pulling power of the SUV which was successful in pulling 60 times its own weight and that too on a railway track.

No changes were made to the car except one. The only modification being the fitment of rail wheels by specialists Aquarius Railroad Technologies, to act as 'stabilisers'. Apart from that, it had the same standard 2.0-litre ingenium diesel engine producing 180PS and 430Nm of torque. The standard nine-speed automatic gearbox and Terrain Response technology generated the necessary traction and Land Rover's All Terrain Progress Control (ATPC) ensured that the SUV could maximise traction at set speed. Take a look at this video to see how Land Rover manages to pull this off!