World's Fastest Land Rover Defender - Michelin Shoed

It is known that tires are used to protect the wheel and to enable better vehicle performance, so they can really make the difference when it comes to snatch a world speed record. This time, a Michelin Diamaris-shoed diesel-powered Defender 90 won the World’s Fastest Land Rover Defender title.

The event took place at Bruntingthorpe proving ground in Leicestershire and gathered 27 entries from tuners or privateers, each of them coming with their interpretation of the Defender.

The competitors went to see which would be fastest over a number of tests that included straight-line acceleration and timed sprints around short circuits.

Winner of the competition, a TD5-powered hardtop tuned by Twisted Performance, was fitted with 285/50 R 18 Michelin Diamaris high performance 4x4 tires.

The Diamaris are originally designed and homologated for high performance SUVs such as the Porsche Cayenne, Mercedes ML, Volkswagen Touareg, Volvo XC90, BMW X3 and X5. However, they seem to fit in well with the Defender, boosting it to win the World's Fastest Defender title.

“We are obviously very pleased to have won this event as we were up against some much more powerful opposition, including supercharged V8-powered vehicles,” the car’s owner Charlie Fawcett commented on the performance.

“In the end though, the Michelin tires really made a difference as we were able use every one of our 239bhp to easily win both of the timed circuit sprints, and the overall title. At times we had so much grip that the car was cornering on two wheels and our driver said it reminded him of his Clio race car in the way it turned into corners,” he added.