You may think that stunt driving and electric cars don’t really mix – at least not in a very exciting way. But Terry Grant has proven that it does. In his stunt driving career he’s achieved a number of impressive feats, not least of which is driving a Nissan Juke up a 1.16 mile hill climb course at Goodwood festival – on two wheels. But his newest stunt was with an electric car.
His chosen vehicle (or rather the vehicle that the Nissan PR team paid him to drive) was the electric Nissan Leaf. The same hill climb course was used for the leaf stunt, only this time the vehicle’s mission was to reverse up the hill as fast as possible.
So how did Terry do? Well, given the fact that the car is fitted with a direct drive motor, it should be able to go as fast forward as it can backwards. The benchmark time was set at 2 minutes 7 seconds in the wet. He reduced this to below 2 minutes, then improved the time again later on – slightly – but was hampered by wet conditions. Finally he got it down to an impressive 1 minute 43 seconds.
As Terry said, it was "less spectacular but a lot more difficult" than his two-wheeled challenge last year, but still fairly impressive for a small electric car. It seems manufacturers of electric cars are very keen on these kinds of challenges, all aimed at dispelling the idea that electric cars are not as fast or manoeuvrable as petrol cars. Still, as nifty as the Leaf is, one would want to ensure one’s annual breakdown cover was fully up to date if reversing up hills became a habit.