[Auto-Moto] Land Rover Range Rover review

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The Range Rover is back in its fifth-generation guise and if there was ever a car that didn’t feel like it needed reinventing, we think you’re looking at it.

For more than 50 years, the Range Rover has simply done what it does: combine the best off-road ability with a plushness – a theme Land Rover pretty much claims it invented. It has, traditionally, been a car you can take anywhere: from checking the fences in the bottom field in the morning, to the market, to a school pick-up, then out for an opera, all in a day.

The questions are whether that is something it still needs to do today and, if so, just how much car does it take to do it? Land Rover sells cars in 130 countries and they all have different ways of doing things – and different amounts of space in which to do it. We’re already aware that the latest Range Rover is a big car, more than five metres long and two metres wide across the body even in its more modest forms, which is what we have here.

It’s the uppermost diesel, a D350, which means it has 350 metric horsepower, or 345 of the Queen’s nags – ample by most standards but still in the lower half of the new Range Rover’s line-up. But thus equipped in HSE form and with a few choice options, it’s a £124,245 car by the time you get it on the road in the UK.

And one can go much further: this is a regular-wheelbase Range Rover but there’s a long one too, and a raft of petrol engines that make a lot more oomph again, before you even get into more bespoke Special Vehicle Operations territory. That makes the Range Rover not just a high-end SUV but one that wants to be a luxury car, too. We are about to test all those credentials and more in the toughest test in the business.

Range at a glance
The Range Rover is offered with a standard and a long wheelbase, though not all engines are available in the long-wheelbase version. Engines are all straight sixes, apart from the BMW V8-powered P530. The P440e and P510e are plug-in hybrids, and an EV is due in 2024.

For Jaguar-Land Rover (JLR), it doesn’t get any bigger than this. Literally! Let’s first talk about the size. The all-new Range Rover (L460) is a very big SUV, much bigger than the previous one in every dimension. The standard-wheelbase model is around 5m long and the extended wheelbase variant is stretched by a further 200mm, all of which goes into making the cabin that much bigger.

But it’s not just about the size. A new Range Rover is also big news for two reasons. Firstly, it’s JLR’s flagship – the Tata-owned British brand’s most expensive, luxurious and technologically advanced car with everything thrown into it. Secondly, a new Range Rover comes along every decade or so, and that means not only does the latest model have to leapfrog all the competitors that came in between, but it also has to future-proof itself for the next decade.

The new Range Rover is a cleaner design, with flush door handles, tight shutlines and fewer creases.

But, looking at the new Range Rover, you wouldn’t think it’s anything revolutionary or futuristic. And that’s the point. Continuity and an uninterrupted visual link to past Range Rovers is part of its enduring legacy and exactly what most owners want. And to that end, the designers have done an outstanding job of retaining the familiar look, but injecting lots of modernity in the details.

The ‘less is more’ dictum of design boss Gerry McGovern is taken to another extreme with the new Range Rover’s incredible simplicity of form. It’s a much smoother, cleaner design with flush door handles and fewer cuts and creases. The shut lines are tighter, which further enhances the smooth surface. A metal piece fixed on the front door gives some relief to the slab-sided body and again is a typical Range Rover design element. Other Range Rover cues are there too, like the blacked out pillars that give the gently sloping roof a ‘floating’ effect, the strong horizontal waistline and the characteristically upright stance for a confident and stately look that Range Rovers are known for.

 

The new LED headlights are slimmer but have exquisite detailing and look like cut glass. The slim fog lamps are neatly integrated into the horizontal lines below the bumper, so you don’t really notice them. You also don’t notice the rear tail-light because they look like black strips surrounding the split tailgate and are hidden until lit.

Stand some distance away and you can’t help but think that the smoother and more rounded shape has taken away some of the tautness of the previous model. However, it’s clearly a Range Rover and it’s clearly a Range Rover for the future.

And that future is most evident with a new platform and high-tech underpinnings. The monocoque aluminium body is around 35 percent stiffer, the hydraulic adaptive anti-roll bar has been replaced by a fast acting electronic system, there’s a new five-link rear suspension and for the first time, the Range Rover gets rear-wheel steering. At low speeds, the rear wheels can turn up to 7 degrees in the opposite direction (of the front wheels) and this slashes the turning radius to just 11 metres, that’s less than other SUVs in Land Rover’s line-up! This new platform is also future ready for full electrification and is engineered to take a pair of motors and a large battery pack. A pure-electric version is due in 2024.

The new Range Rover’s sumptuous cabin can rival the best luxury sedans, but what could trip it up as a replacement for a luxury sedan is the high step into the cabin. Even by selecting Access mode, which gets the height adjustable air suspension to lower the body right down to the wheels, getting in and out of the cabin isn’t as easy as in a sedan.

This could make for an inelegant entry and exit from the cabin for some elderly folks and women in sarees. You can tick the optional foot rest to make ingress easier, but it’s still a tad high.

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/land-rover/range-rover

https://www.autocarindia.com/car-reviews/2022-range-rover-the-best-gets-better-424997