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A Land Rover Discovery has towed a 121-tonne road train

Standard 4x4 takes on a seven-carriage Australian road train. Yikes

Published: 20 Sep 2017

Flip all seven seats down on the new Discovery and you have a leviathan 2,406 litres of luggage space. If that's not quite enough though, Land Rover has a solution. It sent an unmodified Disco into the Australian Outback where it successfully towed a 328-foot long road train weighing a whopping 121 tonnes. That's some extra storage capacity.

Land Rover promises this Disco was completely unmodified, too. And fitted with the same 254bhp 3.0-litre turbo diesel you’d use on the morning school run alongside the standard eight-speed automatic transmission and four-wheel-drive system.

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The Discovery Td6 in question has 443lb ft of torque, but only a claimed towing capacity of 3,500kg in day-to-day life. Yet it managed to take on 35 times that during the impressive feat, towing a total of seven trailers and a 13-tonne tractor unit.

Even the tow bar was generic factory-fitted kit. From a stopped position, the machine managed to drag the train nearly 10 miles and up to a speed of 27mph – faster than you’d ever find yourself on the North Circular of a morning.

John Bilato, Managing Director of haulage specialist G&S Transport, took the wheel for the epic pull. He said: “These road trains are the most efficient form of road haulage on the planet and using the Discovery made this the most economical of all.”

The stunt was set up by Land Rover as part of its announcement of technology updates for the 2018 model. For your own towing missions, the optional Advance Tow Assistant helps with reversing by providing new trajectory lines on the parking camera feed, allowing the driver to steer while the system calculates the inputs required to not end up hitting your own trailer. Rear Height Assist and Hitch Assist are also available. Just stick to stuff below 3500kg if you want to keep your warranty…

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