David vs. Goliath: How Two Amateurs Outperformed Jeep's Pros' Team with an Old Suzuki
When Gonzalo Bravo and Eduardo Canales “climbed” the Ojos del Salado volcano in their second generation Suzuki Samurai SJ40 in 2007, they removed a sign on the way that had previously been left behind by a JEEP-sponsored expedition at an altitude of 21,804 feet (6,646 meters).
Its inscription was: “Jeep Parking Only: All others don't make it up here anyway”. They subsequently returned it to the previous world record holders for the highest altitude ever reached by a four-wheel drive vehicle (Nunez 2007a, Cesari 2022; Branch 2023).
What stratagem did they use?
Number 3: “Killing with a borrowed knife”. This means using someone else's resources to achieve your own goal (Leonhardt 2024b).
When the Chrysler Corporation launched the new JK generation of its Jeep Wrangler, it wanted to cement its reputation for building the world's best off-road vehicles with a Guinness record.
To do so, they hired German adventurer Matthias Jeschke and his Extreme Events team and sent them into the Andes with two new Jeep Wranglers and support vehicles to break the record for the highest altitude reached by a motor vehicle.
To prove their superiority, the Jeep team left a sign there (Nunez 2007; Cesari 2022), which the local hobby mechanics Gonzalo Bravo and Eduardo Canales brought down from there with their twenty-year-old Samurai less than a month later (Nunez 2007a, Cesari 2022; Branch 2023).
The “Jeep only” sign fulfilled several functions: 1. it told the duo exactly how far they had to get with their micro off-roader to break the current record. 2. it provided them with irrefutable proof that they had at least matched, if not beaten, the adventure team. This allowed them to beat Jeschke's pros at their own game (“Killing with a borrowed knife”).
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The Guinness Book of Records recognized their achievement and certified that they had reached a height of 21,942 feet (6,688 meters) with their car (Guinness World Records n.d.). Chrysler's multi-million PR coup had thus failed before its advertising campaign could even get started.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that the Extreme Team subsequently stated that the two Chileans couldn't possibly have broken their record because they had reached the edge of the volcanic crater with their jeeps then (Das Agências de Notícias 2007).
However, as they themselves set a new altitude record of 6,694 meters on the same mountain at the beginning of 2020 (Daimler Truck 2020; Branch 2023), they simply seem to have been bad losers.
Sources:
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