CAN ONE STILL GO OFF ROAD?
On the weekend Her Majesty The Queen turned years old she was photographed touring her Sandringham estate not in a horsedrawn golden carriage or her custom Bentley limousine but in a Range Rover The Queen has had tens of Landies over the decades but her favoured car to drive oneself in is a Rangie
Since her current model is a ¡plate the Queen’s almost certainly waiting to see if the new Range Rover is any good before deciding whether or not to upgrade Ma’am we’re only too happy to oblige Take a throne feet up on the corgis and we’ll discover if the fifth generation of the world’s most iconic luxury x has done enough to earn the Royal House of TopGear’s official seal of approval which we’ve just invented Authenticity Sums up all Land Rovers in a word that Even if the toughest terrain they’ll ever tackle is the owner’s pumice gravel driveway it’s a Land Rover’s USP and curse to have to embody a ‘climb every mountain ford every stream’ attitude The new Range Rover as we’ve become used to employs clever ‘Terrain Response II’ traction and stability control whizzbangery that reacts to whatever all tonnes are rolling across or wading through locking differentials and adjusting throttle and gearbox behaviour on the fly
What you’re not used to is a Range Rover that’s not a x So long as the temperature’s above a balmy C and your speed is between and miles per hour the new Rangie runs in rearwheel drive to reduce friction and emissions Once it detects an unbeaten track or you fiddle with the beautifully rendered mode screen
all four wheels are immediately powered Any transition is as imperceptible as a butler’s cough
For romping about your acreage the Range Rover is still deeply overqualified The standard air suspension can rise up to mm wrecking ride quality in the process of course and there’s the same sense of unflappable patient offroad progress as in the latest Defender only with less steering wheel fidget And more winces as rogue twigs scrape their way along the smooth fuselage
Off to a pointtopoint? Of course you are Please note the splitfolding tailgate has remained jolly good but is still rather tardy going about its business bad show And the elegant new automatic folding parcel shelf will have to go if you’re considering a rifle rack in the boot