Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT Races a Stunt Plane in a Land Versus Air Race

This one makes no exception, but unlike others where the two vehicles race each other on separate tracks, this one is as close as it can get to an actual head-to-head competition. All that is made possible by the fact that the flying machines are represented by a very nimble Silence SA1100 Twister stunt plane. That meant that inflatable markers were placed on each of the track's bends, forcing the aircraft to follow the same route as the car.

But the plane is not why we're here. It's the car. The Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT uses a 6.4-liter HEMI V8 engine with 461 hp, and it has four-wheel-drive with Launch Control. That enables the performance SUV to reach 62 mph (100 km/h) from a standstill in just five seconds on its way to a top speed of 160 mph (258 km/h).

The Silence SA1100 Twister only has 110 hp, but it's also much lighter. Its acceleration figures are only impressive in the air (it can go from zero to 62 mph in about four seconds), but starting on the ground, it will need 12 seconds to reach that speed. Once airborne, though, it's about 50 more agile than the cumbersome Jeep.

That was made pretty obvious by every corner of the 1.8-mile long track of the Blyton Park Driving Centre circuit in Lincolnshire. The Grand Cherokee SRT is a beast - and a very nice-sounding one at that - but you can see it tilt whenever the track stopped running straight. On the other hand, that was also a testament to the fact that British Le Mans driver Ed Morris, the man behind the SUV's wheel, was really going for it.

In the end, his efforts paid off when the Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT crossed the finish line less than a second ahead of the stunt plane flown by Peter Wells. Considering the plane lost a lot of time at the start of the race, had the track been a quarter of a mile longer, we probably would have had a different winner. Would we have thought any less of the SRT? Absolutely not.