With the blanket coverage of the stunning, Scottish Car of the Year Award-winning, Evoque, Land Rover are clearly concerned people will forget they make any other cars.
This is why they’ve invited dozens of journalists from all over the world to the Scottish Borders to test the Defender, Discovery4, Range Rover and Range Rover Sport, which have all been revised for 2012. I spent a morning driving their flagship vehicle the Range Rover on and off road.
There are three engines available: 375hp V8 and 510hp supercharged V8 petrols, and a 4.4 litre V8 turbodiesel. I drove the diesel, which will be by far the most popular engine in the range. Its power is up 15% to 313hp, and CO2 emissions have dropped 14% to 253g/km. Fuel economy, meanwhile, increases by 18.5% meaning it breaks the 30mpg barrier for the first time.
Apart from the upgraded engines, other changes are relatively minor. There are new 20-inch alloys, the grille has a black surround, some nice detailing has been added to the body, and there’s an expanded options list.
The Range Rover range starts at just under £70,000, rising to £86,345 for the supercharged 5.0 supercharged V8 in Autobiography trim.
Very few buyers will ever take their pride and joy off road, but they are designed to be the ultimate all-terrain cars and Range Rover were determined to show us just how capable they are. So I took my £80,000 carer through some of the toughest off road terrain I’ve ever encountered.
The team from the Land Rover Experience set up a challenging course on the Duke of Roxburghe’s vast estate surrounding Floors Castle. First I directed the car down an alarmingly sharp and muddy descent, with the instructor telling me to ”take my foot off everything and let the car show you what it can do.” What followed was a happy few hours crawling up river beds, squeezing between trees, clambering up slopes and charging across fields and moors.
Not once did the mighty Range Rover prove unequal to the task there is very little this car couldn’t cope with.
Back on the Queen’s Highway, the Range Rover proved just why its so popular with the well-heeled. At 70mph in eighth gear, the engine is barely ticking over, nary a sound makes it through the double-glazed windows, and the magic carpet ride is unfazed by potholes or bumps. The diesel engine is virtually silent as well.
The interior is quite sumptuous, and Land Rover have benefited greatly by their tie-up with Jaguar. The rotating bezel gear-changer is an elegant replacement for a traditional automatic lever, and they’ve also pinched the clever display that lets the passenger watch television while the driver looks at the sat nav on the same screen.
Yes, it’s expensive. Yes, it has a moneyed image about it. But I can’t think of a single other vehicle that combines effortless luxury and comfort with prodigious off-roading capability.