This week a Spanish off-road racer will be taking on one of the harshest and most challenging desert environments on the planet - in a bog-standard Range Rover Sport, a vehicle better known for ferrying footballers from practice to pub than for epic off-road adventures.
But wait, it gets worse: 47-year-old Moi Torrallardona - a veteran of 10 Dakar Rallys - is on a strict timetable! Not only is he trying to break the record for crossing the 650 000 square kilometres of the Arabian Peninsula so aptly named the 'Empty Quarter' but he also has to be there by Sunday, because Land Rover has committed to displaying his record-attempt Rangie on its stand at the Dubai motor show, opening on 5 November.
The Empty Quarter, or Rub' al Khali as it is known in Arabic, is the largest sand desert in the world and the second largest desert after the Sahara on the planet.
EVER-SHIFTING TERRAIN
The route runs from Wadi Adda Wasir in Saudi Arabia to the border of the United Arab Emirates, a distance of more than 1000km over ever-shifting terrain with no reliable water sources, temperatures of more than 50 degrees during the day and sand dunes towering 250 metres into the air.
It is an enormous and incredibly harsh environment, taking up an area close to the size of North America over four countries - Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen - and it's usually the domain of specialist sand vehicles.
Torrallardona's Range Rover by contrast, is absolutely showroom standard - it doesn't even have a roll cage - and will be loaded down with jerry-cans of fuel, tools, shovels, sand-planks, tow straps, an auxiliary winch, and emergency supplies of food and water.
A recipe for disaster? Land Rover obviously doesn't think so; we'll keep you posted.