Tesla Model X v Fiat Panda Cross: UP-HILL DRAG RACE & which is best OFF-ROAD

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Hi how are you matt watson here from car wow so i’m sitting in a fiat panda cross 4×4 and next to me is a tesla model x both of these are technically suvs and we’re going to have an uphill drag race off-road as well as compete in five other off-road challenges as well to see which of these two cars is actually the best off-road so let me tell you about this

Little fiat panda it has a 900cc two-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine with 85 horsepower and 145 newton meters of torque i’ve got a six-speed manual gearbox all-wheel drive and this thing is light it weighs under 1200 kilos it’s also cheap took about 18 000 pounds brand new that tesla it’s got two electric motors and combined they produce 417 horsepower and

660 newton meters of torque so loads more performance than this little thing but then 95 kilowatt hour battery adds weight that thing weighs over 2500 kilos it’s also expensive brand new that was like 95 000 pounds though that one is three years old in fact it’s owned by car wow ceo james hind he bought it two days ago i called him and said oh you’ve got tesla

Model x we’d like to do some off-roading with it can you lend it us he’s only had it two days paid 68 000 pounds for it and there is a chance that i might destroy it today and if i do this will be the last car wow video i ever do anyway make sure you subscribe to this channel just in case i don’t get fired because there’s gonna be loads more cool videos coming

Soon also why don’t you follow us on instagram finally if you’re thinking about buying a new car be a tesla or a fiat check out car wow you can compare offers on cars you can compare delivery times dealers reviews put a link up there just click on that you can go check it out alternatively at a later date you can simply google help me car wow my team and i’ll

Help you choose the right car for you and get it for a fair price from one of our trusted dealers anyway that’s enough for that let’s go with the race buying a new car then head to car wow and my team will help you find your next car at a fair price car wow your one-stop car buying comparison site all right here we go i’m going to put the car into off-road mode

That tesla has his air suspension jacked up to the highest point so it doesn’t bottom out and she’s gonna launch in first gear keep him first fortunately we’ve got hill hold so when i lift off the brake it’ll hold it for a second give me enough time to get on the accelerator then i’m just gonna hoon it see what happens we’ve got darren starting the race there he’ll

Also be judging the cars in the five other challenges we put them through and whichever one wins a challenge gets two points and then the second place carl the loser car gets one point and at the end we’ll tot up all the points to see which car was the best overall off-road for now though let’s find out which is the quickest up this slope oh slip back come on oh

This is close score i’m gonna do it i was watching that wondering if it was going to bottom out it looked like it managed to just stay off the ground i backed off a bit at the top i’m not sure who won that let me just check got there darren new one the panda came first and the tesla was behind in second place okay so that’s two points of the panda and one to the

Model x this is the next challenge this next challenge is all about maneuverability so we’re gonna drive along here over the rut and then go around the hairpin which is quite tight and then back on ourselves and darren’s gonna time us and the car that does it in the quickest time wins it’s that simple now in case you’re wondering why the tesla wasn’t so good on

The last event it’s because once it starts to slip it seems to really cut the power to the wheels and so it got a slow start hopefully that won’t be a problem this time because i’ve now jumped into the tesla because i want to make things harder for myself you see this is all about the turning circle how easy you can get around that turn at the top and this car’s

Turning circle is 12.4 meters whereas the pan does nine meters so he’s got an advantage but i’ve got tesla power so i should shoot off well massa i quite like the interior spec on this it’s nice isn’t it i think james chose wisely if i don’t damage his car let’s do this darren’s gonna count in the panda let’s see what it does three two one oh poor star stuttered

Away from the stop but nathan’s fly by that thing is so light not in 1200 kilos it’s just fine right there and maneuverable at the top it’s really funny to watch he’s smashing that that’s a tricky bit you don’t want to get too carried away they always get powered into the tree oh through the water splash did a good job there that is really quick that’s as quick

As i’ve ever seen anything go around there let’s see what time we got what do you do 1931. oh my gosh okay that’s going to be hard to beat but i’m going to give it a go right come on don’t break this i’ve got my seat jacked up so i can see all the ruts and stuff oh this is where i could damage the car three two one oh i can just feel the weight of this thing you

Know two and a half tons i’m just gonna have to be careful here ah those little bomb out oh the sensors are going crazy how am i going to make it round here come on can i can’t get in one i’m gonna do one i’m gonna do this in one that is insane ah oh i’m not going to bottom out am i i’ve got to watch this this is my job on the line i’ve lost this already it’s

A big sign of the dash just go stop stop i just don’t have the confidence to thrash this through here oh oh oh i can just feel it just on its suspension even though it’s raised up to the highest level right that’s embarrassing i lost that but let’s see by how much i do 50.28 at least it was under a minute so that’s two points to the panda and one point to

This so far then panda’s got four points the tesla has two this next challenge is all about getting you down a steep slippery slope as safely as possible so we’re can have a reverse race in the way that the car that is slowest wins so what we’re going to do is it goes to cars hill descent control systems on this panel it’s called gravity control put the kind in

Neutral to go slow as possible so you don’t store the engine and then you just set the speed of the brake and then you release the brake and it should just break itself as it goes down the hill same with the tesla except for you don’t put it in neutral you just drive down the slope and you set the speed of your brake the car should sense is going down a hill and

It should then apply the brakes all the way down so we’ll be taking our feet off the pedals for this to see which car gets you down the slowest let’s do it three two one i’ve head horse it’s working just shut off he was kind of level with me he just buggered off this look in neutral feet off the pedals can you see look look look look look there you go and there

Safely down i don’t know what happened with that tesla anyway that’s two points for the panda and one for the model x which means this panda has six points in total and the tesla three this next challenge tests these cars ground clearance their suspension travel and their chassis articulation because we’re going to go down that hill there which has various steps

The cars will walk over those steps and then we’re going to come up a more extreme slope with even bigger steps before we get on right let’s do this gone tesla it’s time to pull some points back so i’m going to follow the panda ah it’s got its wheel in the air already it’s like it’s stepping down some steps how’s this going to do bearing in mind that that weighs

Half what this does is this going to be able to get a wheel in the air oh that feels weird i’m having to control it on the brake rain’s making it a bit slippery oh i’m riding on 22-inch alloy wheels hopefully i’m not going to scratch them on any rocks i’ve got slip start on this car so i’ll let it slip a bit to get me out of a tricky situation i’m now balancing

Send me in the air i don’t drop off the top of this and crunch the front bumper ground clearance on this is actually bend the panda that’s obviously a shorter car so it can cope with like sudden steps better got down that all right it’s quite pleased with that now we need to go up the hill and this is a bit more extreme let’s see how the panda does appear this

Will test the traction control system as well because it’s all a bit slippery and the cars are on their road tyres go on panda it’s struggling because he hasn’t got much power this has got all the power look at that with his wheel in the air oh is it gonna get stuck oh no if it gets cross-axled so it has like diagonal wheels up in the air it will be stuck unless

It’s esp system sorts itself out by breaking the wheels which i think it did that did well god it’s all on me now uh sorry james about your car please don’t fire me i’ve got darren directed me lots of beeping and bonging going on okay let’s just have a word with darren what’s going on darren you’re about to bottom out on the passenger side really have the ground

Clearance but i’ve got more ground clearance than that that’s got the articulation the movement where your independent suspension is pushing wheels down but not necessarily lifting your car up okay right let me just check something pretty sure i was in the high driving position no it’s in low it keeps resetting itself should we call that operator we’ll call that

Operator error so this has got air suspension and you can raise it up and you can see look very low six inches low 6.7 inches standard 7.5 high is 8.3 inches and then very high 220 millimeters i’ve just got all metric now for the last one because it doesn’t say it on here we raised up if you go forward you’re going to touch the bottom of the car i want you to

Double check it’s still going up knot so the front goes up but the back’s not because all the weights towards the back got heavy batteries so it’s just sinking down i don’t want to be defeated that easily here we go oh oh and now we’re going backwards it’s like a stuck pig and now i’m cross axled it’s game over oh god the main difference in the toy is slightly

More aggressive ties than the ones on this one so would it make it over there now if you have a bit more grip on the tires yes oh can i try again a bit more and i’m not gonna bottom out you’ve got about that much gap on that side okay let’s try come on sorry james you don’t want your car to be defeated though do you this has got like high performance road tires

On it so if we’d had some better tires we might have got away with that might have made up there yeah it was really struggling though i’ve got the ground clearance you’ve got the ground clearance it’s just the tire won’t hold it well there we go so yeah again one point to the tesla two to the panda which means the panda is on eight points and this is on four i’ve

Got to get back down now i’m getting wet as well not as wet as darren for this next test we’re going to drive down that slope there which is banked and what’s going to happen is the car is going to get the wheels up in the air and that will show how much twist that is in their chassis and to really check out the twists we’re going to open and close the door make

Sure we can without any problems at all if you do that in an old land rover defender because they twist so much you can’t actually open the door but because these are monocoque chassis so the body actually adds to the strength of the car they should be fine i always can be looking for is how much the suspension compresses so how much they sit down into their

Wheel arches because you don’t want it compressing too much because that means the car can get a little bit stuck so we’re gonna drive down here and then darren will mark them at the end see which car does best let’s do it i wonder if that car’s gonna twist because it’s so heavy already it’s squatting down on its suspension normally with air suspension you’re

Better off because you can really jack it up and stop it pushing the wheel into the wheel arch but that one seems to be quite low down at the rear yeah there we go door open fine you’re probably thinking matt you should be doing the falcon doors well i didn’t want to wrist on the falcon doors because if there is any twist and we open the falcon doors they could

Get stuck and damaged and that cost thousands to fix and then i’d lose my job you don’t want that all right here we go good thing about cheap cars like this you just can chill out right there we go i think we’re up in the air now oh can i open the door no problem at all look at that all fine yeah she’s doing well this is easy in this way watch out for this big

Div at the end so don’t bottom out yeah go around that way this panda is so good all right let’s get the verdict from darren which car he thought won that challenge so darren let’s come in running so what do you reckon which car one for control the tesla had more wheels on the ground it was a slower and easier drive the panda won’t do with the manual side was a

Little bit bouncier and it did had fit four wheels off the ground so it didn’t have the articulation travel that the tesla had oh wow okay tesla wins one finally so two points of the tesla in this challenge and one point to the panda so overall that means that the tesla now has six points and the panda has nine points this is the final challenge and what we’re

Going to do now is check out the cars approach angles their departure angles and their break over angles by driving over three obstacles and we’ll see how well they compare this car’s already lost based on the current scores it cannot win but maybe it can save some face and close the gap on the panda come on tesla you can do it here we go oh feel this thing

Thump about you can just the weight of it where’s that panda’s like a little mountain goat so the panda has an approach angle of 24 degrees quite a short overhang so it gets at that slope quite easy this one i don’t know tesla don’t state it oh we’re spinning our wheels a bit oh break over angle now i ground out this sounds bad sorry james sorry james i’m going

To stop here and see what daryl thinks i should do darren i’ve clearly got a very bad breakover angle can you come and just see how broken over i am i’m stuck momentarily detained i’m momentarily detained or maybe permanently unemployed i need to get over here without damage in the car you won’t make it don’t need to go back we’re reversing sorry james sorry

James sorry james soft mud it’s soft mud james slippy now we’re gonna check the departure angle at the front which i didn’t intend doing you can see the bit that caught me up there just a little bit of the ground just poking up not too bad no serious damage done these brakes make a noise though don’t they listen to this there’s a car groaning oh you hurt me it’s

Like a dying animal oh is that noise so we’re not going to the second obstacle because this is going to just ground out again bring into the final obstacle instead in the meantime let’s have a little panda go across the second obstacle so i’m going to have to sit this obstacle out and watch the panda do its thing it’s going to test out the departure angle it’s very

Good on the panda it’s 34 degrees got a little short back end so it shouldn’t ground out its bottom when it goes off the edge of this slope and when it comes back down the bottom look at that it just did that so easy right now i can join it for the final obstacle breakover angle which i’ve already proved isn’t great i’ll find the panda again now so its breakover

Angle is 21 degrees which is all right this area does over here get some wheels in the air oh back wheel is spinning oh backward off the ground here we go come on tesla don’t bottom out i’m relying on darren here oh i can feel the stability control just nibbling away looks like the tesla did all right on this bit it’s just that one hill there at the beginning

Let it down let’s see what darren thought ah darren what do you think far superior what have that bit yes okay panda struggled like mad with traction because it was a shorter wheelbase the speed and the control the tesla came up there lifting the wheels up in the air you’re a nice height on the ground and as you level out it just pulls forward straight away so

Smooth but it didn’t do to the obstacles because it’s a longer wheelbase than the the panda okay and that’s why it bottomed out because the departure angle is greater on the fiat because it’s a shorter axle okay so overall then on this section just panda right you don’t want to give it to the pad do you no because it touched on there oh really accused one okay

One on this hill yeah it touched on that hill yeah and it lost on this hill so which one do you think perform best overall in the conditions today i took little fiat okay so there you go so another two points of the fiat one point to the tesla so the final scores then are 11 points and the win for the fiat panda and the tesla scored seven points and comes last

Now i’ve actually found an amazing deal on an suv through carway if you want to see what that car is one of my favorite suvs and the deal click on the pop-out banner up there to go check it out on carway thanks for watching i hope you enjoyed the video if you did please give it a like let me know some other off-road challenges you’d like us to do in the comments

Below you click on those windows there you can watch some more off-roading videos and if you click on that box there i’m not going to tell you what’s there but it’s something cool click on it you’ll see see you next time

Transcribed from video
Tesla Model X v Fiat Panda Cross: UP-HILL DRAG RACE & which is best OFF-ROAD! By carwow