CarMiddleEast - Drive: Range Rover
Forget your Porsche Cayennes, BMW X5s, Lexus LX570s and even the Mercedes Ms and GLs, the ultimate go-anywhere luxury car remains the Range Rover. And in the latest 2010 model year guise, the subtle styling tweaks hide yet another astonishing leap forward in quality, engineering and sheer on- and off-road prowess. This car is Land Rover’s 911 – just when you think they’ve hit the zenith of development and cannot possibly improve, they do.
As much as motoring can be about the purity of expression behind the wheel, it can also be about conquering and dominating the terrain you traverse. The Range Rover will afford you an economy of effort, whether you are crossing deserts, wadis or Deira City Centre car park, that’s unprecedented. It’s indecently easy and yet deeply satisfying to drive – a sublime balance.
Let’s return though to mundane matters of model-year revisions lest you dare dismiss the new generation car as just a facelift. Granted the visual 2010 signatures are few and far between: primarily you’ll notice that the LED-laden new headlights are narrower, this means the corner edges of the bumpers have risen whilst the grille remains as deep and imposing as before.
A distinctive three-fingered stripe motif illustrates the new hierarchy in the Land Rover brand – the Range Rover Sport gets two, and we expect the new baby Rangie, the production version of the LRX concept, will get one. It features in the headlights, on the side air intakes and the tail lamps.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it
Like they say though, ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it,’ and the silhouette, first introduced in 2002 remains tall, handsome, elegant and still utterly contemporary, the mild makeover sprucing things up nicely. All the engineers’ best work has been buried deep within this substantial form.
The differences inside aren’t immediately apparent either, other than the newly hewn clean-cut buttons on the dashboard, centre console and splashed over the steering wheel. But wait, what’s that behind the wheel? Nothing. Absolutely zilch. Well almost, there’s a weird, but oddly pleasing, topsy-turvy horizon depicted on a 12-inch screen.
Faithfully realistic looking dials and other graphics appear only when you depress the start button (keyless go at last). The screen is configurable and uses the extra space to give detailed dynamic information when you’re in off-road mode.
If you think this is clever, wait ‘til you get a load of the new centre touch-screen monitor featuring the highly intuitive operating system and easy-to-use sat nav from its Jaguar brethren. Select the split-view feature and whilst the driver can see and operate the various touch buttons and sat nav etc, the front passenger can watch TV or even a DVD – on the same screen, at the same time.
Or click on camera button and you get input from five little spies dotted around the vehicle, two in the front bumper, one in each mirror and another in the rear spoiler. You can pick a camera and enlarge and even zoom in and change the view angle.
Along with the parking sensors, the surround view makes it virtually foolproof to manoeuvre in tight spaces – except that on our particular car the cameras annoyingly kept blinking out of action.
Once on the move you’ll find the blind spot indicators helpful, along with optional high beam assist, Forward Alert monitor and the Active Cruise Control. This last device is brilliantly conceived and executed – and makes for fuss-free highway cruising. Press a button and the car will do the rest, slowing right down to a halt if needs be.
Faster than a Porsche Cayman
This Supercharged variant is endowed with performance brakes featuring 15-inch front discs with six-piston callipers, at the rear there are 14.3-inch discs. Stomp on them and you’ll hang from the seatbelt as 2700kg instantly sheds speed. And that’s reassuring because it will also accelerate to 100kph in just 6.2 secs – faster than a Cayman.
Here, it’s aided by a brand new engine and revised six-speed ZF transmission featuring an intelligent sports mode that adapts to your driving style – nudge the lever across into sports and the powertrain becomes even more urgent and crisp. As engineers like to point out, the new engine is one that has been developed specifically for Land Rover and Jaguar, unlike the last two units borrowed from BMW and Ford respectively.
Direct injection comes into play and a sixth-generation Eaton blower takes power up to 503bhp with 461lb ft of torque – that’s an increase of 29%t and 12% respectively. Mash the loud pedal and a thrummy rhythmic roar accompanies the somewhat startling surge in acceleration. Passengers are usually stunned into silence at this time – either that or they’re seriously soiling their underwear…
Keeping it all smart and tidy
It’s an outright defiance of nature to have something of this scale move at velocities that lightweight Lotus Esprit Turbo supercars were barely capable of just 30 years ago. The immediate fear you succumb to after the initial elation of getting away with such ludicrous blasphemy, is that at the first hint of trouble, it’s all going to go so terribly, messily, hideously wrong.
Oh ye of little faith. Never has a Range Rover felt so stable and planted when thrown about on tarmac. At city speeds you could actually conduct an emergency stop in the middle of a corner without any suggestion of the car tipping over as old skool SUVs would threaten to do.
It’s also stemmed the old floatiness and its wallowy nature has been subdued. The Range Rover Sport is certainly a friskier drive round the bends, but now the daddy Rangie no longer puts you off hard cornering.
It’s down to even more adaptive dynamics alchemy that change the damper settings depending on the circumstances. And with all the electrotrickery combined it’ll even slow you down automatically if you are cornering too fast. Barrelling into a sharp turn and getting on the power too early results in just the slightest sensation of auto braking.
All of this and we haven’t even ventured off-road yet. Land Rover’s trademark Terrain Response System also gets a host of upgrades including ‘Sand Launch Control’. Don’t go booking yourself a slot in the next sand drag duels at Liwa though.
It’s designed to make it easier to drive away in sand as it provides just enough slippage to let you move off without digging in – just put it into sand mode, apply the e-brake and drive off. It really works.
The rock control programme allows for a more stable body and less severe pitching left and right – so your friends can leave the motion sickness pills at home. But back to our beloved dunes; admittedly it’s a heavy car, so you need to keep up the momentum in soft sand and tyre pressures must be dropped, but it really can go play in the giant dust bowl, that’s for sure.
The space, kit, comfort, ride, build quality and quietness of a luxury saloon, the performance of a sportscar, the cross-country talents of... well, a Land Rover, and the cachet of automotive Royalty.
A Range Rover used to be king of the hill, the ultimate off-roader, but it’s forsaken that accolade somewhat, or rather bequeathed it to something like an LR4, in search of a bigger picture, a wider audience, a more regal patronage.
Land Rover’s flagship is the ultimate all-rounder, and where the previous car might have been flagging the 2010 model has not only caught up with the game, but pulled way out ahead setting new benchmarks for those that will inevitably follow.
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