It’s amazing what it takes to get me excited
Driving a range rover through an airplane might work
Iam jaded. I admit it completely. Twenty-eight — oops, 30, for I am older and therefore even more phlegmatic than I remembered — years of testing exotic cars and attending junkets around the world have left me completely inured to the entreaties of even the most imaginative of PR flacks. I have monetized my passion and the outcome exacted is rampant indifference. I have seen it all and don’t even bother taking the pictures anymore to prove it.
Ferraris delivered to my door in sunny California? Check. Full-boost gonzo acceleration in a Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse? Been there and done that. Flat out, getting some air on the back straight of Mosport Raceway in a twin-turbo, 616-horsepower McLaren MP4-12C while my co-pilot, ostensibly my minder, is urging me to go faster? That was just a few weeks ago.
But I — and I never even imagined I would ever write these words — had never driven a Range Rover through a plane. Yes, a Range Rover. Through a plane. Again, for those not quite grasping the concept: I drove a car — OK, actually a great big SUV — into the rear end of a plane and then exited via its giant nose (and giant it is, since said plane was a pregnant guppy-like Boeing 747).
Now, I have come up with plenty of crazy stunts in my life, most of which a) have been mojito-fuelled and b) can’t be detailed here, because the statute of limitations have not yet run out. But, I have never (perhaps the bars I frequent have always run out of rum before I’ve reached that level of delusion, er, creativity) thought of driving a Range Rover through a jumbo jet.
But drive the new 2014 Range Rover Sport through an airplane we did. And impressive as that was — and I can now admit to being still a bit blasé about the whole affair as I was driving up the ramp into the 747’s rump — Land Rover’s general manager of its Land Rover Experience programs, David Sneath, had an even more diabolical plan in store. Laid out through the fuselage of the big Boeing was an obstacle course (obviously, Sneath has access to stronger libations than I). When we weren’t avoiding seats, buckles and overhead bins, we were driving around Defenders and along steeply inclined ramps. Again, all inside a freakin’ plane.
Of course, all this madness had some purported method. In this case, it was to showcase that Range Rover’s new Sport had not lost an iota of its off-road abilities in transforming into Land Rover’s version of a Porsche. For 2014, said Sport has been suspensioned, braked and tired to be more 911 than Cayenne. Indeed, as you’ll read elsewhere in Post Driving, the base Range Rover Sport doesn’t even have a two-speed transfer case (see Page DT6 for an explanation of what the heck a transfer case is), a sacrilege among diehard Land Rover fanatics. So, Sneath and gang had to come up with a dramatic way (I am hardly the only jaded journalist) to illustrate that, despite its newfound passion for the Targa Florio, the new Range Rover is every bit the Billy goat its predecessor was.
Of course, many critics — and, indeed, even some Land Rover insiders — question whether it really matters if the new Sport is as off-road worthy as its predecessors. After all, but a ridiculously small percentage of Land Rover owners ever dare submit their pricey show ponies to such abuse. Why cater so assiduously to the solitary anorak when the majority will get no further off-road than bouncing off the curb in front of the Holt Renfrew?
It brings up an issue that most automakers don’t want to discuss in public, i.e. the role of perception versus reality they use in the marketing of their wares. Yes, it’s absolutely true that precious few will use any of the trekking ability that Land Rover spends millions upon millions engineering into each of its cars. But, then it’s just as true that precious few will ever use all 560 horsepower that BMW insists on turbocharging into its M5. Or that more than one in a hundred will be able to discern that extra decibel of silence that Lexus strives so mightily to steep into its LS460. The truth is that selling the modern automobile — or at least the modern luxury automobile — requires imbuing vehicles with qualities that most of its customers will never use just so that they can brag that they could.
Range Rovers are bought because one might suddenly decide, on a particularly dreary Monday morning, to drive all the way to Terra del Feugo. Or, if you’re a particular kind of English nutter, traipse through a giant airplane. It may not reflect reality, but it sure is a whole bunch of fun.