Air France and Porsche GB set a new Guinness World Records title

In a record-breaking achievement, a standard Porsche Cayenne has successfully towed a 285-tonne Air France Airbus A380 42-metres, setting a new Guinness World Records title for ‘Heaviest aircraft pulled by a production car’.

It’s impressive not only because the A380 is over 100 times as heavy as the Cayenne, but because the car in question was standard.

The German 4X4 , driven by Porsche GB technician Richard Payne, towed the giant Air France double-decker aircraft over a distance of 42-metres at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, to set a new Guinness World Records title for ‘Heaviest aircraft pull by a production car’.

It beat the previous record by a margin of 115-tonnes.

The new Guinness World Records title was set by a 157mph Cayenne S Diesel costing £66,767 whose 4.1litre V8 engine produced 385hp of pulling power – the equivalent of around four Ford Fiestas. The exercise was then repeated using a 176mph Porsche Cayenne Turbo S costing £121,550.

A far cry from towing the standard caravan, trailer or horse-box, the Porsche Cayenne was connected to the Airbus A380 via a special attachment that sat on the vehicle’s standard tow bar.

Slowly but surely as Porsche’s Mr Payne pressed down on the accelerator, the Cayenne carefully pulled away with the giant passenger plane edging forward inch by inch behind it and then gradually picking up the pace as both car and aircraft gained in momentum.

Mr Payne, a technician at Porsche GB, who drove the record breaking car said: ‘It did it – I’m so relieved! We don’t usually go this far to test the limits of our cars but I think today we got pretty close. I could tell that it was working hard but the Cayenne didn’t complain and just got on with it. My mirrors were quite full of Airbus, which was interesting.