A car-versus-car race can be exciting enough. Make it a car-versus-plane race and you're moving in the right direction.  

Now, if the car is actually the new Range Rover Sport and the plane is a vintage Spitfire you have a recipe for a wonderful match worthy of our viewing time. That's precisely what the good folks at Land Rover have done by pitting their latest (and fastest) Range Rover against a vehicle that's a bit more powerful. The race is a head-to-head blast down a grass runway with the Rover staying grounded as the Spitfire takes to the sky.

The driver of the Range Rover Sport plops the now-more-shapely vehicle into Dynamic mode so the suspension can cope with the slight undulations of the slippery runway. Meanwhile, the Spitfire pilot just pulls back on the yoke to escape the slower surface. Once in the air, the Spitfire can use all 1,750 horsepower provided by its supercharged Merlin V12 engine. Of course, the plane requires quite a bit wider area to make its turn and that gives the Rover runner an edge on the way back.

You're going to have to watch the video for yourself to see how it ends, but we can tell you its worth a look. Not just to see what happens, but also to hear that Spitfire fire up and roar down the runway. It's a wonderful machine that is a beautiful sight to behold as it soars through the air up to its 400 mile per hour top speed.

_______________________________________

Follow Motor Authority on FacebookTwitter, and Google+.