All photos courtesy of Toyota Qatar on Facebook
To celebrate Toyota’s 50th birthday in Qatar, the company bagged a Guinness World Record yesterday afternoon with the longest convoy of off-road vehicles.
More than 400 Toyota SUVs from Qatar showed up to participate in yesterday’s event.
The previous record belonged to the UAE, with 153 cars. Although Toyota Qatar has yet to officially announce the number of cars that successfully completed the convoy by adhering to Guinness’ guidelines, I Love Qatar announced on Twitter that the number was 154 cars.
The final number of cars that set a new record (beating UAE) is 154 cars. Congrats @toyotaqatar for #1Nation1Record. @iLoveQatar #Qatar
— ILoveQatar – Live (@ILQLive) November 21, 2014
Toyota Qatar later retweeted the announcement.
That means Qatar eked out its victory by just one car. Toyota Qatar was not available for immediate comment.
While drumming up excitement with its “1 Nation 1 Record” campaign, Toyota Qatar said it hoped last year’s record by ensuring that a minimum of 300 vehicles participated, to allow for a wide margin of error.
The rules
In order to compete for the world’s largest off-road convoy, SUVs must drive in a line for at least 30km, ensuring that the distance between each motorists’ cars does not exceed 100 meters.
Additionally, all drivers must have registered their car on the campaign’s website, have valid driving licenses and cross both start and finishing gates in order to be counted.
Because the event marked Toyota’s successful presence in Qatar, only that manufacturer’s SUVs were eligible to partake in the competition.
The event kicked off yesterday afternoon at 1:30pm at an off-road track next to the Endurance Village before Sealine Resort, where motorists gathered to participate.
In order to partake in the competition, all motorists had to undergo a quick service check on their cars and listen to a safety brief before waiting for a minimum of 300 cars to line up on location.
Records
This is not the first time Toyota has celebrated its presence in a country by setting a world record.
In June, Toyota in Russia broke the record for the largest car logo. As many as 1,416 cars were strategically parked to form the Toyota logo, breaking the previous record of 1,215 cars.
To date, Qatar holds dozens of world record titles, including the world’s largest soccer ball and the biggest replica of a newspaper supplement.
Did you participate yesterday? Thoughts?
