Land Rover

How A Sketch In The Wet Sand 70 Years Ago Evolved Into One Of The World’s Leading Luxury Vehciles.
 

- Robert Klara

One of automotive marketing’s grand traditions is using a vehicle for a jaw-dropping stunt in hopes of demonstrating its quality and might. In 2007, for example, Ford chained a C-123 cargo plane to one of its F-150s and stopped it cold with nothing more than the pickup’s brakes. And who can forget Elon Musk sending his Tesla roadster into orbit?

But few exploits can match the cojones exhibited by Land Rover, which earlier this year drove a Range Rover Sport plug-in hybrid SUV to the top of Heaven’s Gate on China’s Tianmen Mountain—a harrowing climb up 999 stone steps, pitched at a 45-degree angle. As Land Rover supervisor Phil Jones observed in the video of the stunt: “This is unheard of—it’s crazy.”