Toyota Tundra vs Volkswagen Touareg

[Adrianli]

 

3:20PM EDT October 14. 2012 - A Toyota Tundra pickup towed the retired space shuttle Endeavour across a freeway bridge in Inglewood, Calif., last night, a publicity coup that helped underscore Toyota's American connections.

 

The shuttle is winding its way from Los Angeles International Airport to a museum near downtown Los Angeles. Most of the way, it is being towed by a tractor atop of a high-tech rig. But for about 100 yards, the crews needed to lighten the load to get it across the Manchester Avenue overpass to cross the San Diego Freeway.

 

That's where the Toyota Tundra came in.

 

As we've told you, Toyota has been practicing for months for the move. We learned last night that execs actually gave the operation an internal code name, Blue Ox, and that training began several months ago -- all for a move of about 100 yards.

 

Indeed, the wait of few hours before the pull was mostly to get crews and equipment in place for the television commercial that Toyota is shooting. A director urged workers to pretend to inspect the rig carrying the shuttle at one point. "Give me a couple of guys in front of the tow hitch, please," he said.

 

The pickup that did the pull was silver with 2-foot-tall Tundra letters written across the side. On the front end was written "Born in America," making it clear that Toyota, a Japanese automaker, wants to use the shuttle pull to once again try to get Americans to think of it as an American maker. The Tundra is made in San Antonio.

 

Even though it practiced for months, pulling the 292,000-pound trailer turned out to be no big deal. The engine never even revved hard. When the truck started effortlessly pulling the shuttle -- in four-wheel-drive low, naturally -- the crowd of several hundred broke into a "USA, USA" chant.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/driveon/2012...eavour/1631235/

[Adrianli]

VW did something similar years ago!!!

 

Volkswagen Touareg successfully tows a Boeing 747

 

 

Volkswagen Touareg V10 TDI has succeeded in towing a Boeing 747-200 weighing approximately 155 tonnes. Watched by engineers, Volkswagen personnel and bemused passers-by, the Touareg V10 TDI completed seven complete runs on the auxiliary runway at Dunsfold Aerodrome, 40 miles south west of London.

 

The vehicle was a standard production Touareg fitted with a special towing adaptor to connect it with the aircraft towing link and loaded with 4.3 tonnes of metal ballast to bring its total weight to just over seven tonnes (7,030 kg) including the driver, an engineer from the technical department at the company

[Vhtfhwlego]

and someone commented that touareg is underpowered.