https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOBDALqOXWw
Maybe I need to brush up on my European geography, but I had never heard of the German town of Geilenkirchen before watching the above video. Now that I know that it's a place where awesomely redneck-ish activities like vehicle tugs of war go down, I feel like I need to plan a trip there in the near future.
For this match-up, we've got a Caterpillar D8 facing off against 20 Toyota Land Cruisers. While we don't get an exact side-by-side look at what the competitors were working with power-wise, here's a rough look at the competing power outputs, according to the Four Wheeler Network.
Although the power that the 1955-1980 Toyota Land Cruisers produced individually was not all that impressive, 90-125 hp respectively, when working together this group produced a combined power output somewhere between 1800 - 2500 hp. The heavy equipment Caterpillar was building in the 1960-1980s wasn't powerful by today's standards, but assuming this D8 dozer was of the same era as the Land Cruisers it would have between 300 - 335 available horsepower.
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Now, obviously, Land Cruisers are not particularly known for their ridiculous under-the-hood specs or towing capabilities. But, there were 20 of them. And, the Caterpillar dozer wasn't exactly built yesterday. So, it was something of a lopsided match-up from the jump.
With all that in mind, the Caterpillar put up one hell of a fight. I feel like this dozer operator has definitely been in a few tug of war face-offs in his day. Best two out of three, and the D8 probably would've at least taken one. So, who's up for a rematch? Someone needs to make it happen.
This post was originally published on February 20, 2019.