MEET THE FAMILY

Mark takes his 1994 press launch CVC P38 to a JLR function... Will it behave itself, though?

IT’S ALWAYS good to find an excuse to take out one of your Land Rovers. So when I was invited to a Jaguar Land Rover function that would involve driving the 2017 model year Range Rovers, there was only one vehicle that would be a worthy contender of taking me to the event and that’s my 1994 press launch CVC P38.

The chance to give it a decent run is always worth taking up, anyway, because P38s hate not being used. Since I acquired mine last year, it’s definitely improved with use; maybe it’s psychological but I’m convinced it drives better at the end of a long run than it did when it started. The 4.0-litre V8 is no ball of fire when hooked up to the automatic transmission – I recently tried a rare 4.0-litre manual and it felt a lot more sprightly – but this combination does give a relaxing drive. I always feel a little calmer after I’ve spent some time behind the wheel, which has to be a good thing. Every P38 owner lives in fear of strange error messages flashing up on the dashboard when they turn on the ignition, but so far I’ve been relatively lucky. It’s had an ‘Airbag Fault’ message ever since I picked it up, which very occasionally clears itself – and which leads me to suspect that it’s due to a poor electrical connection, rather than an actual fault – but which always returns next time I start the car. And it likes to beep and tell me ‘Key still in Ignition’ when the key plainly isn’t and I’m about to lock the door. LRM editorial director David Lillywhite’s P38 does exactly the same, which is a small comfort.

So I shouldn’t have been surprised when JLR’S head of PR took an interest and stuck his head inside the driver’s door as I fired up the V8 and we both spotted a brand-new message on the dash. ‘Alternator Fault’, it said. How embarrassing! That had never come up before – and it hasn’t in the weeks since. I’d almost swear that the car was doing it deliberately, just to show me up.