The Jaguar E-Pace has barrel rolled into the record books

More than 25 months of testing across the world’s harshest environments, and it ends with a leap of faith through the air. Ladies and gentlemen, the new, not-electric baby Jaguar SUV has just set a Guinness World Record for the furthest barrel roll in a production vehicle.

That’s right, all those words happened. SUV. BARREL ROLL. World record. At London’s ExCel centre, stunt driver Terry Grant swallowed as many brave pills as humanly possible, gunned the throttle on Jaguar’s shiny new E-Pace baby SUV, and took a 160-metre run up to the hit the air at speed.

The result? He managed a bona fide 270-degree barrel roll 15.3 metres through the air, landing cleanly on all four wheels, no doubt breathing a huge, huge sigh of relief immediately after. Props to anyone who read that sentence while humming a ‘slide whistle’ à la The Man with the Golden Gun.

“As far as I am aware, no production car has ever cleanly completed a bona-fide barrel roll, and therefore it has always been an ambition of mine to perform one ever since I was a boy,” Grant explained after the jump. Honestly, the man’s got 21 Guinness World Records to his name.

We’re told that during the jump, Grant was subjected to 5.5g of force. That’s a lot of g, so months of CAD modelling and testing and analysis made sure he didn’t end up in a crumpled heap.

“While I’ve seen the barrel roll stunt in film,” Guinness World Records adjudicator Pravin Patel later remarked, “witnessing this incredible feat in real life was something pretty special.”

Don’t forget, for the reveal of the F-Pace, Jag deployed full Terry Grant to go and do a loop-the-loop (which earned him another world record).

What on earth will Jag plan for their next unveil? A slingshot around the Moon?