What am I missing about the range rover commercial where the little dude drives his car up a staircase? He acts like it is a big deal but it comes across as a pretty lame flex for an SUV.
Is there some wow factor that I am missing? Is driving up 1000 stairs anymore difficult than driving up 50?
They show a twisty road at the start....that he never drives. Then, at the end, it gets stuck on the last step, and they act like this is a great achievement.
Land Rover is a British company, part of Jaguar but parent company is actually Tata now - headquarters in India. I don't know if the driver was Chinese or little, didn't really care and wasn't apparent to me in commercial so looked it up. Driver Ho-Pin Tung was born in the Netherlands but does have Chinese ancestry. He's a professional race car driver, has been with many teams.
The drove up Heaven's Gate, a pretty amazing place in China - not sure how they got permission since if it went wrong he would have damaged the railing. It's 45 degrees so that's not something to scoff at, and 999 steps to a natural rock formation. Road up looks like fun as well.
I do agree it's a strange choice to show capability of a SUV - perhaps could have done more to show how steep it was. I doubt it's been tried by others so no way to claim it requires some special auto features. But you seem almost offended by it.
JLR has a huge fanbase in China because Audis are so commonplace there and people want something different other than the A4L and A6L that any commoner can buy. JLR has also garnered a very VIP dealer experience as well as lots of marketing such as this commercial here.
It will be interesting in the next 5 or 7 years to see what happens when warranties start running out on these and people have to pay out of pocket for repairs, or realize their used Range Rover is worthless.
Thanks for making me look that up. Looks pretty cool especially for a 100% grade (45 degrees).
Where I currently live in Australia is at the top of a 300 ft. vertical climb which seems steep at 12% grade. The remote property I recently bought in Northern Nevada is on a 100% grade so, yeah, this is pretty impressive.
But, what they're really selling is their 400hp plug-in hybrid, etc. I don't really care so much about that. What I do know from hiking around my property in Nevada is that if you drop something, it is going to continue to roll down the hill. So, if this stunt driver failed, He's going back down those 999 steps - hard.
It would have been equally impressive if they showed the Range Rover's Hill Descent control helping him drive down the 999 steps. For your entertainment, here's a recent failure to negotiate the steep street near my house.
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