Aussie kids are world's best at designing Land Rovers

A TEAM of 16-year-old students from Pine Rivers State School in Queensland have clinched victory at the 2016 Land Rover 4x4 In Schools Global Education Challenge.

The competition required students to design and build remote-controlled four-wheel drive vehicles capable of overcoming a set of driving tasks and obstacles, including a wire bridge and a rock crawl course.

Students were also judged on the design and engineering of their rigs, as well as how well the vehicle was presented and marketed.

The winning team ‘Wombat Warriors’ blew the judges away and achieved the best overall performance, best verbal presentation and an excellent score on the driving challenge.

“This project was a great way for us to learn more about engineering careers and develop our skills.” Team leader Lily Eiseman said.

“Teamwork played a huge part in our achievement and we’ve spent around 600 hours working on the project over the past six months.”

The winning students defeated 130 bright youngsters from 12 countries around the world – including USA, South Africa and Brazil – to receive an Arkwright scholarship from Land Rover, a scholarship at Harper Adams University and a JLR Academy e-mentoring programme.

And in further promising news for Aussie engineering, team Zircon from Dubbo College in NSW finished second overall and also took out the Best Engineered Vehicle award.

The 2016 event also saw the debut of the Land Rover Ben Ainslie Racing (BAR) towing challenge. The mini rigs were required to tow a scale version of the Land Rover BAR training boat around the tricky course. It wouldn’t be a proper off-road course if there wasn’t a towing test!

Check it out in the video above!

JLR’s aim to encourage young people to pursue automotive careers is coming along nicely, with the programme set to reach five million youths by 2020.

Congratulations to all involved.