► A step by step guide to bi-wheeled glory
► Terry Grant talks us through his world record run
► Standard Range Rover SVR – with 17 people on board
1) ‘I had the easy job’
‘We needed 16 passengers in the car to get the record [for the most number of people in a car on two wheels]. My team worked out how and where to put everyone [including five people in the boot]. I just concentrated on what I had to do because I didn’t want to get distracted. I have the easy bit, the driving!’
2) ‘I can’t see where I’m going’
‘Rain made the aluminium ramp slippy, so sliding off it is a big worry. Once I’m up I can’t see anything to the left hand side, or most of what’s in front of me; I can only see a bit directly ahead and off to the right. Everything else is blind. So I kind of have to remember everything.’
3) ‘The worst thing that could happen is…’
‘The biggest fear is someone falling into the steering wheel, because we’ll go over, or go back down [onto four wheels]. So I made sure the front passenger leaning across the dash was really wedged in. Worst thing that could happen is I put it on its roof – not a great advert for me, or the car.’
4) ‘There’s no rollcage’
‘The car is absolutely standard, a brand-new, stock Range Rover Sport SVR. There’s no rollcage. The tyres are pumped up to around 90 pounds of pressure, rock-hard. There’s a massive amount of force on the tyres, on the suspension, on the steering, on the car in general. Imagine the weight of 17 people! It’s colossal.’
5) ‘I had to put it down hard’
‘Sometimes I can bring the car down really gently. This time it was quite a hard hit, because with all that weight it wouldn’t have gone round the next corner in the wet. I didn’t want to risk anything, and I knew we’d got the world record, so I took the safe option.’
6) ‘It was easier last time’
‘When I did it before [he pulled off the same trick with 15 people on board a Nissan Juke(!) in 2014] it was in sunny Barbados. This time, in London, was harder, because of the car’s size and weight, and the wet surface. Still, it was snowing in the morning, so rain was a big improvement.’