SVI Engineering, the South African powerhouse of producing armoured vehicles, trains, and much more, has launched a new video series where the company shoots car parts with assault rifles for informative, as well as entertainment purposes.
“We’re sometimes asked whether certain everyday automotive components are capable of resisting a bullet,” said Nicol Louw, SVI business development director.
“The only way to find out for sure is to test, which is exactly what we’re doing in this new series.”
SVI’s “Shoot Through” series aims to determine “the exact effect a 7.62x39mm conventional steel-core round fired from an AK47” has on car components, providing invaluable knowledge to the armouring firm with which it can educate customers and further improve upcoming products.
The tests are carried out in a dedicated underground shooting range at SVI’s Bashewa headquarters on the outskirts of Pretoria, Gauteng.
Here, the rifle is mounted on a secure stand and aimed at the car part at the bottom of a corridor to ensure perfect accuracy, and the ensuing havoc is recorded on a Photron Fastcam SA4 high-speed camera to show detailed footage of the damage done at 30,000 frames per second.
“The use of a high-speed camera gives viewers the opportunity to see the sort of energy carried by an AK47 round at the very moment it impacts – and, in many cases, penetrates – an object,” said Jaco de Kock, SVI CEO.
“This obviously provides markedly more information to the viewer than they are able to extract purely with the naked eye.”
Live episodes
A new episode of Shoot Through is published on SVI’s YouTube channel approximately every two weeks, with the first two instalments already live.
The pilot episode follows the ventilated steel brakes from a Toyota Land Cruiser 79 being the rifle’s target with De Kock at the trigger.
The slow-motion footage shows the AK47 round piercing the outer portion of the rotor, becoming flattened in the process. As a result, it lost the energy required to penetrate the second surface.
Following the test, Louw quipped “if you’re not in an SVI armoured vehicle, make sure that the brakes on your car are ventilated and you might have a chance to stop a round or two.”
The second episode released had a VW Polo engine as the AK47’s next victim.
The steel-core ammunition penetrated the block’s outer casting but did not emerge from the other side, providing “only limited cover at best.”
“So, top tip, when you drive your standard vehicle you can have engine blocks all around you to protect you,” remarked Louw.
The first season of Shoot Through will comprise as many as 14 episodes with a wide variety of car components still in line to be put to the test.
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