Porsche Cayenne pulls Airbus A380 to set Guinness World Record

The Porsche Cayenne is now officially a Guinness World Record holder – the German SUV has taken the crown of heaviest aircraft pulled by a production car during a recent publicity stunt at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport.

The new record was set using a standard £66,676 Cayenne S Diesel, which makes use of a 4.1-litre V8 twin-turbo producing 380bhp, but more importantly, 850Nm of torque. With those figures it was able to tug a colossal, 285 tonne, 516 seat, 73 metres long Airbus A380 supplied by Air France over a distance of 42 metres.

More often than not world records are set by fine margins, but the Cayenne has taken the record by a significant gulf – 115 tonnes to be precise. The previous Guinness World Record for heaviest aircraft pulled by a production car was set back in 2013 by a Nissan Patrol, which managed to tow 170 tonnes of aeroplane. 

The car was driven during the feat by Porsche GB technician Richard Payne, who said, “We don’t usually go this far to test the limits of our cars but I think today we got pretty close”.

The record was repeated afterwards using a 562bhp Cayenne Turbo S, too.

Porsche is no stranger when it comes to Guinness World Records. Alongside the marque’s various Motorsport benchmarks, a team of 12 from Porsche Human Performance set the world record for the greatest distance run on a treadmill over 48 hours back in 2009, covering 868.64km collectively. Porsche owners and fans have also come together to set records  - in 2008, a convoy of 2,325 owners in Germany created the largest parade of Porsches on record. 

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