WATCH: Shropshire motor team scorches to world record with 237mph Nissan Qashqai

The team at Severn Valley Motorsport in Telford rebuilt their Nissan Qashqai from the ground up – and were rewarded with a maximum speed of 237mph for their troubles.

The top record adds an extra 7mph onto the previous record, set by Toyota.

Mike Little, general manager for the company, was the driver on Saturday, when he tackled the track at RAF Kendrew.

Watch Mike's record-breaking drive:

The 51-year-old had just a little over a mile to reach the record speed, but he said he had been feeling confident.

"I think everybody else was shocked," he said. "There were cars there worth up to £5 million, and we beat them all.

"You can't focus at that speed, everything is going past you. When you drive a normal car you're focussing 200 or 300 yards in front. You can't do that at that speed.

"It's really difficult. There's signs on the runway that say you've got to brake if you haven't already."

The Nissan Qashqai was just a regular car, but has been absolutely transformed by the team.

"It had a 1.6 petrol engine, but we've put a Nissan GTR engine in. We're specialists with that engine," Mike explained.

"Standard horsepower is about 120, and we've lifted that up to 2,000.

"We're strengthened everything. We've changed the rod, the crank, the pistons – everything. The turbo is as big as a man's head.

"It has taken hundreds of hours to actually do all that. It's the only one in the world."

The successful attempt nearly didn't happen, after the SUV dropped a valve.

That left engineers desperately stripping down the engine and rebuilding it from scratch until midnight on the day of the trip.

But as soon as it hit the runway, the SUV started to shine.

"Bugatti takes four miles to reach that speed," Mike said. "We're doing it in three quarters of a mile."

Mike's co-workers back in Telford were left waiting to find out how things were going.

"All they knew is at 12.30pm I had hit 225mph, which wasn't enough to break the record. They all went home on tenterhooks.

"The next run I hit 237 – It was very exciting, and the atmosphere when I came home on Monday was amazing."

Not to rest on their laurels, the team are already looking to increase the speed.

And Mike said he thought he could already get extra speed out of the Qashqai.

"That car at 237 was knocked flat out but there was more left, I just broke the record and eased off," he said. "There's a speed counter on the video, and you can see I go from 200 to 237mph faster than you can count.

"We've got a new project that's going to be unveiled soon. We've got sights on a GTR doing 260mph. We've got a Nissan Duke R, there's only five in the world and that's going to be 240 to 250mph.

"The aim is to hit 300mph. I don't know whether that's been bandied about jokingly or not, but that's the ultimate goal. Whether we'll ever reach that or not, I don't know."