ICY TOWING TEST FOR RANGE ROVER SPORT HYBRID

4x4magazine | 19/02/2015 | 0 Comments

Land Rover has teamed up with Airstream on an adventure to the Arctic Circle to demonstrate the capabilities of the new Range Rover Sport Hybrid. The world’s first premium diesel hybrid towed the 2.5 tonne travel trailer 2,500 miles to Land Rover’s cold-weather test centre in Arjeplog, Sweden, then on to the Arctic Circle.

Setting off from Land Rover’s Design and Engineering Centre at Gaydon in the English Midlands, the team headed to Mengerskirchen in Germany, where a specially winterised travel trailer was waiting for them at Airstream Europe’s headquarters.

Top of Airstream’s European range of trailers, the 684 is 8.25 m of boutique hotel suite on wheels, with two double beds, satellite television and Corian surfaces in both its fully-equipped kitchen and spacious bathroom. Thus specified, and once the team had packed their kit on board, the Airstream weighed in at more than 2.5 tonnes.

En route, the team had to cross the five mile long Øresund Bridge, which was being lashed by the tail end of Hurricane Ole. Gale force sidewinds would have deterred those in lesser machinery but the Range Rover Sport Hybrid benefits from the same Trailer Stability Assist that more conventionally powered stablemates do. Braking each wheel individually based on what is happening to the trailer, any incipient sway is dealt with within milliseconds of it starting – well before it becomes an issue. Off-road, the car proved its worth too, repeatedly pulling the trailer up and down snowy and often dangerously icy hills, and along forest tracks without fuss.

Further north, as temperatures plummeted to minus 22 degrees centigrade outside, both the vehicle and the trailer’s cold-climate capability and comfort ensured that driver, passengers, and indeed those cooking and sleeping in the trailer each evening, experienced nothing but unruffled luxury.

The demanding cold-weather facility at Arjeplog in northern Sweden is the winter proving ground for the full range of Land Rover’s all-terrain vehicles. For four months every year, the company’s corps of engineers pitch vehicles to their limits against extreme winter conditions with temperatures which have been known to reach minus 39 degrees in daytime, but can plummet as low as minus 42 degrees centigrade overnight.

Phil Talboys, who manages the Arjeplog test facility, commented: “The Range Rover Sport Hybrid has gone through the same gruelling test and development regime that all our cars do. This journey just goes to show that the Range Rover Sport Hybrid is pure hybrid – with all the capability and versatility that you’d expect from a Land Rover.”