Sunday, December 26, 2010

LR4 gets armoured protection

Land Rover offering BR6/FB6 protection

Look closely at the door pillars and you will see that they are a bit chunkier than usual, that's about all the difference you can see in the physical appearance of this bulletproofed Land Rover LR4.

If you see it in real life, the glass will all look a bit hazy and that is because they are a few inches thick with layers of polycarbonate sandwiched in between.

Open the doors and you will feel where some of the armour plating has gone into, the door aperture itself would be a bit smaller as there are bullet/shrapnel guards around the perimeter. (Armour testing video below)



These flashing blue lights are cool huh?

In BR6 mode, the armour should withstand about five kilogrammes of C4 in close proximity without suffering any breach of the passenger compartment.

If you want to learn more about armour plating click HERE

Under the bonnet is the same 5-litre V8 churning out 375 horsepower, while this may be enough for the standard car, in the armoured version, it will turn progress very stately.

Land Rover says it will still accelerate the vehicle to 100km.h in 10.6 seconds, which is a decent getaway speed if the baddies are chasing.
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The suspension needed heavy modding to handle all the extra mass so Land Rover gave it heavy duty air suspension, uprated dampers, fatter anti-roll bars and heavy duty brakes.



We have driven a B6/7 armoured Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen and can tell you that they are not fun to drive at all, the mass of the full armour is nearly the equivalent of a small car in weight so everything, including the steering takes longer to respond but these are not vehicles that are self driven, the chauffeurs are all given James-Bond style training to handle difficult situations and execute stunt-like manoeuvres to escape possible assassination attempts.

VIDEO OF A BULLETPROOF ROLLS ROYCE PHANTOM BEING TESTED




GALLERY






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