This is the fifth-generation Range Rover, and, well, it doesn’t feel like it needs a reinvention, does it?
While the new Land Rover Defender was a product transformed and the latest Land Rover Discovery went a bit on-piste compared with its predecessor, what we have here is the same luxury-car-meets-SUV – the sort of model the Range Rover helped to define – only more so. More luxury, more refinement, more size. More technology? More price? Put it this way: “Alexa, how much is this new Range Rover I’m sitting in?”
“From £99,375.”
Some background, then. The new Range Rover can be had in short or long-wheelbase forms, and both are larger than the versions they replace.
It rides on a new platform called MLA Flex, 80% aluminium but with a steel bulkhead at the front. There are rings of strengthening steel, too, around the lower body at the A-pillar section, and the whole body at the C-pillars and D-pillars, plus around the edges of the front-door apertures. Static torsional rigidity is said to be 33kN per degree – up to 50% better than previoulsy.
The Range Rover was a big car before and remains one now. The standard-wheelbase version is 5052mm long, up 75mm on the last one, with a 2997mm wheelbase, while the long-wheelbase variant adds another 200mm to those totals. The Bentley Bentayga is 5141mm long, the BMW X7 5151mm. The Range Rover is also wide, at 2209mm across the body – seemingly the same width as across its door mirrors.