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Is the Mk5 Range Rover better than not only all its peers, but all its predecessors too? We find out

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For more than 50 years, the Range Rover has simply done what it does: combine the best off-road ability with a plushness – a theme Land Rover pretty much claims it invented. It has, traditionally, been a car you can take anywhere: from checking the fences in the bottom field in the morning, to the market, to a school pick-up, then out for an opera, all in a day.

The questions are whether that is something it still needs to do today and, if so, just how much car does it take to do it? Land Rover sells SUVs in 130 countries and they all have different ways of doing things – and different amounts of space in which to do it. We’re already aware that the Range Rover is a big car, more than five metres long and two metres wide across the body even in its more modest forms.

We use the term modest lightly. There are three bodystyles to choose from, none of which are small. There's the standard wheelbase, long wheelbase and long wheelbase with seven seats.

And one can go much further: the standard wheelbase car gets four trim levels, the long wheelbase two and the long wheelbase with seven seats two more. Plus there are petrol, diesel and plug-in hybrid models to choose from. And that's before you even get into more bespoke Special Vehicle Operations territory. This makes the Range Rover not just a high-end SUV but one that wants to be a luxury car, too.

With such a degree of choice and personalisation, rivals for a Range Rover are slightly hard to pin down. The Mercedes G-Class offers similar levels of off-roading ability with a bit of old-school charm, the BMW X7 is an all-round more sporting affair while the Bentley Bentayga adds a touch more individualism.

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Not all engines are available in the long-wheelbase versions and are all straight sixes, apart from the BMW-powered V8. A Range Rover EV is due fairly soon too.

DESIGN & STYLING

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range rover panning

The Range Rover rides on an 80%-aluminium platform called MLA-Flex, although logically it does share as many components as possible with other Land Rovers.

It’s equipped for partial and full electrification, as well as internal combustion: most ICE cars, will have at least mild hybridisation, but a few ‘dirty’ markets choose to do without.

We prefer the functionality of conventional door handles. Pop-outs like these don’t always stay as you want them (in instead of out, for example). They do look sleek, though, and will help reduce drag (by a tiny amount).

In addition to the aluminium, there are strengthening steel rings circling around the entire body at the C- and D-pillars, at the lower body beneath the A-pillars and around the edges of the front door apertures. Static torsional rigidity is up by 50% over the previous-generation car, at 33kN per degree. 

Suspension is by air springs – with no coil option – which can raise the car over its standard height by 135mm for off-roading, or lower by 50mm to ease entry and egress. At the front are double wishbones, with a five-link set-up at the rear.

As standard, there are also 48V active anti-roll bars, whose software looks at the sat-nav so they can prime themselves for upcoming corners.

There’s more as standard, too. Active all-wheel steering can pitch the rear wheels to oppose the fronts at up to 7.3deg at low speeds to give the standard-wheelbase car an 11.37-metre turning circle – the same as most small family cars – while there’s also torque vectoring via braking to aid turn-in, and an electronically controlled limited-slip rear differential.

We will deal a bit more with its off-road credentials in the designated section, but the car is fitted with Land Rover’s adjustable drivetrain, traction, stability and suspension control system called Terrain Response II.

This is a big car. It was before but it’s even more so now, at 5052mm long in standard-wheelbase form, with a 2997mm wheelbase, to which the long-wheelbase version adds 200mm. Big, but still less than both a Bentley Bentayga (5141mm) and a BMW X7 (5151mm).

It is also a wide car, at 2047mm with its mirrors folded and 2225mm with them out, but previous Land Rovers have mitigated this slightly by offering significantly better visibility than their competitors.

All engine options are mated to an eight- speed torque-converter automatic gearbox made by ZF, with a low- range transfer box for more serious off-roading. It drives all four wheels, except on the road at between 12mph and 100mph if it’s above 3deg C, in which case the car slips itself into 2WD, said to reduce CO2 emissions by up to 4g/km.

INTERIOR

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range rover dashboard

There are hints to a theme started by the L322 Range Rover of 2002 inside the latest car: a large horizontal slab of dashboard is bisected with vertical elements in marine/yacht-inspired fashion.

It’s less obvious these days, partly owing to the 13.1in touchscreen floating in the middle of the dash, but the idea’s still the same: to give a classy, classical, slightly detached overview of what’s going on. You sit back and relax and the controls come to you. It’s not an immersive driver-focused cockpit like a sports car’s.

HVAC controls remain proper buttons, or close to. Pull or push the rotary controller to get to fan speed or seat heating and cooling. A neat, functional idea.

Which all suits rather nicely. The seats are large and flat but hugely adjustable and the driving position is tall, upright and dead straight, allied to a big steering wheel and pedals. Today’s gear selector is a wide, fat one not unlike a throttle on a powerboat. Next to it, appropriately, the terrain response control knob can be pushed discreetly into the transmission tunnel.

Then there are covers for the various cubbies and cupholders, to basically shut out non-essentials. It’s a bit of a shame, then, that the aluminium-effect panel they sit on is easily capable of reflecting light into your eyeballs and that there’s no control knob, save for the volume, to make infotainment controls easier.

The digital instrument pack is clear and the steering wheel buttons – a haptic panel rather than individual physical ones though they are – are not easily mis-pressed. Perceived material quality and fit and finish are up to the price, even though these days that means £100,000-plus.

Space is plentiful in the back and while a long-wheelbase Range Rover can be had with seven seats, most will come with five. Some can even be specified, if you talk to Special Vehicle Operations, with four and various electric tables or chillers.

Probably more useful is that the tailgate still splits as it opens – with the lower part providing a useful ledge on which to put picnics or sit and change boots or swing your legs, and cover provided by the top part. The rear seats split and fold electrically and the boot floor divider can even be set up as a backrest for reclining occupants.

Infotainment

Range rover 2022 016 4x4 screen

Want to know what menus are selectable from Land Rover’s Pivi Pro system?

We will be close to running out of words for this section, but wheel information, navigation, accounts, seats, climate, eco information, valet mode, off-road information, low-traction launch, Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, media, cameras, vehicle dimensions, voice control, towing and trailers, cabin lighting, park assist, air quality, vents…

It’s all rather too much. Could the physical terrain response knob on the dash, which is likely to be used very little, be replaced with a rotary controller to navigate this stuff?

At a standstill, the functionality and usability of the interface and its menus are pretty clear, and the screen responds quickly to prods.

There is voice control with Amazon Alexa in some markets, and the navigation has shortcuts and location via What3Words. The Meridian stereo, meanwhile, sounds great.

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

range rover engine

The pick of the engines is Range Rover's Ingenium six-cylinder diesel. In D350 trim it delivers 345bhp and 516lb ft, yet in normal driving you barely know it’s switched on.

Even when you ask a lot of this powertrain – and a fully fuelled weight of 2667kg as tested means you might need to – it’s smooth and unobtrusive.

I barely noticed the rev counter. The Range Rover is so muted it just pops itself into a mid-range you’ll barely hear and thrums in the middle distance.

From rest, two-up and fully gassed, it went from 0-60mph in 6.3sec – a little off the claim but a number that still means it’s a fast and capable machine. A smoothly responsive one, too, with easily selectable gear ratios if you opt to use the gearshift paddles yourself, and a long throttle travel with predictable kickdown if you opt to let the gearbox software do it for you.

In more relaxed driving, this is one of those cars where it’s usually unnoticeable which gear it’s adopting, and while there’s only so much the best software and hardware in the world can do about the fuel consumption of a car of this size, it does its best, adopting as high gear as sensible without labouring the engine or harming the refinement. At a 70mph cruise, an eighth-gear ratio that means the engine is spinning over at just 1550rpm keeps it particularly unobtrusive.

The PHEVs are responsive and when the 3.0 petrol engine is zinging along, it’s doing it very quietly in the background, with just a little sporting edge to it. Things are more responsive if you pull the gearlever into ‘S’ rather than ‘D’ but the electric motor is there to assist anyway – you can just use throttle rather than have to pull gears to make progress.

BMW's V8 petrol engine does suit the Range Rover and is a deserving and indulgent fit for the flagship models. There’s a faint woofle at low speeds, building to a cultured growl under harder loads and at higher revs. It's available in a couple of different outputs but either one is brisk. The V8 is unstressed, even when pulling out to overtake slow-moving traffic on an A-road. At times, though, the V8 can feel a touch too involved. It is particularly tricky to judge throttle modulation. Under acceleration it just wants to give it the full beans, whereas the typical Range Rover driver may want a more refined, dignified take-off from a set of traffic lights.

Braking is a touch less impressive than the engines. Unfortunately, the test track never quite managed to dry out during our day at Millbrook, so we had to deal with some damp patches. Even so, a 60-0mph time of 3.67sec and a 70-0mph distance of 66.2m are poor.

The last time we tested a 2.5-plus-tonne car in the damp, it was only 7deg C outside, yet the BMW iX needed 3.42sec and 57.8m over the same benchmarks. Our Range Rover was on all-season tyres, the BMW on road rubber, which goes some way to explaining the discrepancy.

RIDE & HANDLING

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range rover cornering front

The idea of threading a two-plus-metre-wide and five-plus-metre-long car down some of central England’s most winding lanes is not a prospect many drivers would relish. In short, big cars – and double-cab pick-ups are about this big; perhaps a little longer and narrower – can be a pain.

But while there’s no escaping the overall girth of a Range Rover, it is easier to gauge its extremities than in, say, most large Q-flavoured Audis or a G-something Mercedes. The glasshouse is larger than on most big-SUV rivals, which prefer a more road-focused, coupé-ish design stance and a lower driving position.

There’s no escaping the vastness of the Range Rover. In a way, the feeling of imperiousness it gives you is pleasing, but over the long term, having to constantly check you’re not going to take the side off would erode the feeling of luxury for me.

This has the effect of making it harder to see the bonnet edges and also down the flanks of the car– a doddle in the broad mirrors of the Range Rover. This is a car that has to sell the world over, so it still feels over generously proportioned for the UK, but poor visibility could have made it worse.

That ability to place it on the road extends to how accurate and responsive its controls and steering are. If you want to place it on the third cat’s eye you can see, you’ll do it; if you want to clip the very inside of a bend to give room for oncoming traffic, you can.

This control is combined with more agility than you might expect given the weight, too. Those anti-roll bars and the air springs mean the Range Rover, if never truly athletic, resists roll and changes direction ably. And around town – or in and out of tight field entrances – the active rear steer makes a big difference to its abilities and a driver’s confidence.

Comfort and Isolation

Isolation is what the Range Rover delivers in spades. Partially that will be down to the noise- cancelling effects of the anti-noise it plays through its headrests but also, one suspects, as a result of the sheer hard work that has gone into the physical isolation of the cabin.

At idle Range Rovers barely put any more noise than is ambient into the cabin, and take the at-speed figures under advisement that it was damp under- tyre, which will raise them slightly. In the dry, one of our testers – who records voice notes while driving to refer to later – was surprised to hear himself say “I’m now doing 60mph”, given there was no louder background noise than at 30mph. We would be surprised if there’s a more isolated car on sale this side of a Rolls-Royce.

Road surface bumps and lumps are brushed aside with ease. Jaguar Land Rover doesn’t get all aspects of vehicle development equally right, but with the leisurely accuracy and linear response of its controls, and the deftness it gives its cars’ chassis, this is one area where few if any other car makers – especially of big cars like this – quite nail it. A Bentley Bentayga is less cosseting, we’re confident.

Run over surface imperfections or cat’s eyes or expansion joints in the Range Rover and you will hear, but not feel, even on 22in rims, a muffled thud from somewhere in the distance. And yet it doesn’t combine this with uncontrolled float or pitch or wallow. 

Off-road notes

Those who find that a Range Rover won’t go far enough off road for them will be a lot braver than most owners. Land Rover is like a supercar manufacturer when it comes to off-roading: it knows some owners won’t use the capability but its reputation depends on it being there.

All of the usual numbers, then, are right up there with class-leading ones. With its air suspension raised fully, at 295mm, it even has 4mm more ground clearance than Land Rover’s own Defender, and 55mm over the Mercedes G-Class. Approach, ramp/breakover and departure angles are all competitive with those two models too, while the Range Rover’s wade depth is a full 900mm.

Just as good, though, is a raft of on-board tech to make using that ability easy, while the rear steer adds a healthy dose of agility on tight track turns. What won’t help it, as in other areas, is a kerb weight pushing two and three-quarter tonnes.

MPG & RUNNING COSTS

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range rover tracking front

Consider freeing up a bit of time in your diary if you’re thinking of choosing a Range Rover because this is the sort of car you can spend quite a long time with on Land Rover’s configurator. With three types of powertrains with varying power outputs, two lengths of chassis and various trim levels to pick from, there are 32 models to start with before you begin optioning.

Our take is that the Range Rover is best in a more modest (though the word modest is relative) specification.

CAP predicts the Range Rover will depreciate less over four years than its rivals.

During our time in a D350, our fuel consumption hovered in the low-30s. The track test figure of 16.2mpg is more of an anomaly than it would be in most cars because in even spirited road driving it’s rather more than that, and while it wouldn’t go beyond 36mpg on a cruise, our average of 32.1mpg is easily achievable.

Over the course of four hours on the motorway we achieved mpg in the mid-20s from a P615 V8, which is pretty reasonable. Although on a two-hour journey through London we found it to be as low as 13mpg.

VERDICT

range rover static front

With a model line-up as broad as the Range Rover’s, there’s bound to be some variation between how good we think the best and least good model in the range is, and we suspect that a short-wheelbase model, on 22in rather than 23in wheels and with a sensible-ish drivetrain, is near to as good as it currently gets.

In cabin isolation and ride composure, it’s unrivalled by anything in this class and, we would wager, a few classes either side of it. It feels easily good enough inside for the price Land Rover is asking and its on- and off-road capabilities are outstanding.

We have lingering concerns about the weight: at a quarter of a tonne lighter, the Range Rover would still be a heavy car. But when you throw the amount of technology at a luxury car as Land Rover has to make it go so far off road, there is something of an inevitability about the fact that it will come in at the top end of the market.

And in making the Range Rover for markets where cars of this size are required, that it’s as usable and approachable in the UK is some kind of feat in itself.

Murray Scullion

Murray Scullion
Title: Digital editor

Murray has been a journalist for more than a decade. During that time he’s written for magazines, newspapers and websites, but he now finds himself as Autocar’s digital editor.

He leads the output of the website and contributes to all other digital aspects, including the social media channels, podcasts and videos. During his time he has reviewed cars ranging from £50 - £500,000, including Austin Allegros and Ferrari 812 Superfasts. He has also interviewed F1 megastars, knows his PCPs from his HPs and has written, researched and experimented with behavioural surplus and driverless technology.

Murray graduated from the University of Derby with a BA in Journalism in 2014 and has previously written for Classic Car Weekly, Modern Classics Magazine, buyacar.co.uk, parkers.co.uk and CAR Magazine, as well as carmagazine.co.uk.

Matt Prior

Matt Prior
Title: Editor-at-large

Matt is Autocar’s lead features writer and presenter, is the main face of Autocar’s YouTube channel, presents the My Week In Cars podcast and has written his weekly column, Tester’s Notes, since 2013.

Matt is an automotive engineer who has been writing and talking about cars since 1997. He joined Autocar in 2005 as deputy road test editor, prior to which he was road test editor and world rally editor for Channel 4’s automotive website, 4Car. 

Into all things engineering and automotive from any era, Matt is as comfortable regularly contributing to sibling titles Move Electric and Classic & Sports Car as he is writing for Autocar. He has a racing licence, and some malfunctioning classic cars and motorbikes. 

Land Rover Range Rover First drives