DriveTimes Five

The Range Rover has been with us for almost 50 years now and in that time has racked up a number of interesting things about it. Today Damien O’Carroll takes a look at five of them. Five Range Rover facts

It went through a few names

Land Rover had been considering a more road-oriented vehicle long before it produced the first Range Rover in 1970.

It started the thought process in 1948 and, by 1951, had a firm concept for what we now recognise as the modern SUV, known informally as the Road Rover. This was canned, however, but in 1966 it started work on what was then called the ‘‘100-inch Station Wagon’’. Development prototypes and pre-production cars were called and badged ‘‘Velar’’ (a name that has since been resurrected), but by the time it launched in 1970, it was officially called the ‘‘Land Rover Range Rover’’, which just skips off the tongue.

It has an artistic pedigree

On its launch in 1970, the Range Rover became the first car to be exhibited in the Musee du Louvre in Paris as an ‘‘exemplary work of industrial design’’, which it certainly was.

Since then a number of other cars have been exhibited in the famous French art museum, including some impressive collections, such as the BMW Art Cars and Ralph Lauren’s collection that included such mouthwatering cars as a 1929 Blower Bentley 4.5-litre ‘‘Blower’’, a 1938 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900 Mille Miglia, a 1955 MercedesBenz 300SL and, Dear Lord, a 1938 Bugatti 57SC Atlantic.

That puts the Rangie in pretty exclusive company.

It’s creator hated what became of it

Charles Spencer ‘‘Spen’’ King was the father of the original Range Rover and he passionately hated what it became.

He hated the idea of his creation becoming more luxurious and particularly objected to it being driven around town.

In 2005, he said he never intended it to be seen as a status symbol ‘‘but later incarnations of my design seem to be intended for that purpose’’. He also bemoaned the fact that the Range Rover had become ‘‘an acceptable alternative to Mercedes or BMW for the pompous, self-important driver’’.

So what did he drive around town then? At the time of his death in 2010 he drove a Volkswagen Golf R32.

The Queen has a hybrid one

Queen Elizabeth has a long association with Land Rover and has personally owned several Range Rovers, but the company has also supplied several official ‘‘State Review Vehicles’’ that the Queen uses for official events and public appearances.

Based on the long wheelbase variant, the Queen’s Rangie has been converted by the factory to a soft top landaulet and is powered by an ecofriendly hybrid drivetrain that uses Land Rover’s 3.0-litre turbo diesel V6 mated to an electric motor for a modest fuel consumption of 6.4L/100km. No doubt a massive improvement of the previous State Review Vehicle that was from 2002.

It has moved back to its roots (sort of)

The recent launch of the extremely limited and equally extremely expensive Range Rover SV Coupe is a return to the SUV’s far more humble beginnings.

The original Range Rover was only available as a two-door for the first 11 years of its production, with the fourdoor version not appearing until 1981.

But while the original was a modest, spartan affair, the SV Coupe is all-out extravagance and luxury, absurdly expensive and with a healthy dose of performance thrown in for good measure, which actually makes it more in line with the Range Stormer concept from 2004. Minus the over-the-top scissor doors, that is.