In the past this record’s been attempted with the original Austin Mini when 21 members of the Plymouth Young Wives Association crammed into a Mini on 30th September 1982. Nearly 30 years later an Audi A3 played host to 22 cheeleaders at Audi-Zentrum Pforzheim to steal the record. It’s probably pretty obvious that you can’t get 22 people into a Smart car, but there is a separate record for the micro car brand and as you can see in the video every effort was made to find enough room to break the existing 16 person record.
In fact, after a lot of pushing, shoving and wriggling there was enough room to set a new record of 18 people in a Smart Fortwo. There were no time limits for the record but the team couldn’t wait around because some members were in awkward and potentially dangerouspositions which meant that time was a factor. The record breakers used strategy and flexibility to manage the space as well as they did. They first filled the boot space that isn’t normally big enough for a decent week’s shopping with five people and closed the bootlid down. That meant that the team needed to find space for 12 adults in the two front seats.
Space was found for 13 people in the front seats, with bodies on top of bodies, feet in faces and every millimetre of available space taken up. Once the doors were closed, Guinness World Record officials took the mandatory 5 second count and then declared a new 18 people record.
Getting out of the Smart proved just as slow and painful as getting in for the 18 participants. We’ve got the whole event on video for you to marvel at the madness that put 18 Australians into one of the world’s smallest cars.
from Eurocarblog
