Porsche Cayenne S Diesel breaks production car towing record

14 May, 2017

For your general SUV market, towing capacity is a nice bonus, but for some it can make or break a vehicle purchase. Recognising such a necessity, and let’s be honest, selling point, Porsche has taken the new Cayenne S Diesel and hitched it up to the heaviest aircraft they could get their hands one … a 314 ton Airbus A380. 

The mammoth piece of machinery was lent to Porsche from Air France, resulting in a towed distance of 42 metres across Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, and Porsche are claiming that this torquey wonder is just a everyday feat for Cayenne’s 4.2-litre diesel V8

It marks a new Guinness World Record for the heaviest aircraft towed by a production vehicle, with the A380 weighing in at a staggering 126.7 tons more than the previous record tow.

To put it into understandable, that equates to roughly 232 Porsche 944 race cars … don’t take our word for it though, Porsche have made sure to seal the deal in video evidence.

Ford’s Mustang – the endlessly hip American dream machine

Fifty or so years ago, the only place in New Zealand to see a Ford Mustang was on the racetrack. In a local market severely constrained by a lack of new motor vehicles, the new North American Ford was a dreamy icon boosted by considerable motorsport success.
Import licences for cars were limited, and if Kiwis travelled abroad, the amount of currency they could take with them was restricted. What’s more, those funds could not be used to buy a car for importation back home. Yet it was OK to spend the money on heavy drinking at a London pub, Gucci shoes, sable fur coats, and excessive stays at the Hôtel Martinez at Cannes in France.
However, any rare Mustang that landed on our shores would not be destined to pose around Auckland’s then trendy Queen Street on a Friday night but would more likely be found in the care of well-known racing drivers on the starting grid at local motor racing tracks.

Chrysler’s classy cruiser

I first saw our feature car, a 1970 V8-powered Regal 770 hardtop, towing a trailer carrying the tidy Ford Anglia classic racing saloon in Broadspeed racing colours that has featured in these pages. The coupe is comparatively rare here, which means anyone contemplating purchasing one of these big two-doors is sure to see prices continue to climb. The latter Charger has claimed much of the Aussie Chrysler limelight, but the simpler and classier lines of this car, which appeared dated soon after its introduction, now have a more timeless appeal.
Former owner, Balclutha motor engineer, Mike Verdoner, remembers the car well. He believes it came from Dunedin originally.
“I’m not sure about the car’s history, but I bought it off its owner at Kaitangata. Unusually, it was advertised in the local newspaper, the Clutha Leader, which was a surprise as these usually go for a lot more money on the internet. I had it for quite a few years. It needed a little bit of work to tidy it up, so I had to decide whether to spend the money on it to do it up, which could have been twenty grand. Its value at the time was not like it is now, so I sold it to Ewan. It’s probably now worth three or four times what I sold it for.”