I’m still in love
I’m still in the first honeymoon period of owning my Range Rover Vogue L322 DE06 CXH. It’s the most fabulously comfortable (and quick) grand touring vehicle ever. ( And please don’t tell the beloved Marjorie, but it’s a very capable off-roader as well, I have found...) Among the papers when I bought CXH I found the firstever change of ownership letter for sending off to the manufacturer that I had ever seen. I sent it off to JLR on 7 March. Haven’t heard a thing from them since. Maybe it’s too old.
One small disaster – the front number plate fell off. I’m old school, I got out me drill and two screws.
It’s still a Land Rover, it’s very nice and, dare I say it, the sidesteps help both the beloved and myself to get in and out a bit easier. A 2006 car, it’s the first year of the Ford/jaguar engine, which is better than its predecessor from BMW, I’m told.
Other updates for the year include the rear mudflaps, which I found out when trying to buy some new ones.
What a meeting that must have been. Imagine, the conference table; on one side a row of designers, on the other side a row of engineers.
The chairman opens the meeting and speaks: “Right settle down everyone, first item on the agenda, what do we, as new owners of the company, need to redesign on the L322?” “Well, the rear mudflaps, obviously, now what else ?” I see via the internet that L322 owners like to update their vehicles by changing the rear lights to later ones, or even those from the supercharged model. I think you can pick up a new pair on ebay, for about £330.
No, the lights are not brighter. They just make people in the car behind you think your vehicle is newer than it is. Really? Er, I think I might save the money.
Driving a great big Range Rover with an equally great big V8 engine, and towing a teensy-weensy teardrop caravan, I keep hearing the same thing: “I bet you don’t know it’s there.”
I always reply the same: “Yes I do, that’s what I have a rear-view mirror for.”
A bloke on an internet forum wrote that he was getting fed up with other drivers flashing their lights at him at night because they thought he had full beam on (which he hadn’t). He wrote that his usual response is a flash of his lights to show them what full beam is really like.
Half a dozen of us immediately replied with: “Your lights are set too high, you pillock.”
Wandering through some old diaries told me that I’ve just clocked up 36 years owning Land Rovers and Range Rovers. Which I guess is quite a long time really.
I decided many years ago that the only non-land Rover product I would ever own would be a Jensen Interceptor.
From an old Series Land Rover, through Freelander, to the top-of-the-range Range Rover, every type of car anyone could need is covered by Land Rover products. And there can’t be many motor manufacturers who can say that.