Range Rover Review

Range Rover

Ease of Use

Due to the height of the Range Rover getting in and out is a considered affair  fortunately you can lower the air suspension (there is even a button on the door to lower the car) but it is still a bit of climb, especially if you have short legs side steps might be the answer.

Once you are in the front I would defy anyone to say that the Range Rover is not palatial. Front leg and head room is excellent and all round vision is very good.

Finding the ideal driving position is easy the drivers’ seat is electrically adjustable in all directions (with a memory function) and so is the steering wheel and the external mirrors. It would be nice if the interior rear view mirror moved electrically as well.

Access to the rear might be a little troublesome for those of you with mobility problems you might wish to invest in a side step. The rear door access is quite narrow and then there is the height of the vehicle make sure the car is set on ‘air suspension access mode’ before exiting.  Rear leg room is perhaps not as good as you would expect from such a big car.

Despite the high driving position all round vision is very good you do have to be aware of other road users and pedestrians below your line of vision. Parking is relatively easy as long as you will fit in the space (that does require some consideration) our test car was fitted with a reversing camera which relays a colour image of what is behind the car, utilising the colour TFT screen in the dashboard.

An electronic parking brake replaces the space-consuming conventional hand brake lever in the centre console area. It is engaged by a simple pull of a switch. It is disengaged automatically when the vehicle moves off, or it can be released manually.

Comfort and Refinement

There is no doubting that the Range Rover Vogue SE is a comfortable place to be in fact in our opinion it is pretty much peerless.

The interior is luxurious and well appointed the leather electric front seats are not only heated but they can be cooled as well. Even the multi-function steering wheel is heated from which you can control the cruise control settings, audio and telephone controls.

The auto-on front adaptive Bi-Xenon headlights actively move when you corner to throw the beam as far forward as possible. There are also cornering lights which light up the inner part of the bend or junction when turning. There are rain sensitive wipers with manual speed adjustment that automatically come on at the mere hint or drizzle of rain. There is internal auto dipping rear view mirror which houses three buttons (‘Homelink’) to remotely control items such as garage doors or electric gates.

The Electronic handbrake automatically releases when you pull off and engages when you switch off the engine.

There are two glove compartments opened by a switch on the dashboard the top glove compartment was occupied by a six CD auto-changer and the wireless remote colour venture camera. The venture camera can magnetically be attached to the car or be placed in a horse box or trailer so that you can view live video from the dashboard TFT panel.

The split tailgate can swallow a massive 994 litres of luggage with the seats up – we liked the fact that the boot had a hard load cover, perfect for protecting your cargo.

The front windscreen and rear screen are heated and as you would expect there is dual climate control. You can set the climate control to automatically come on at set times to cool or heat the car perfect to heat the car on the cold mornings before you venture out and should you forget to program the timer you can use the remote control from the comfort of your home.

Off Road

We did not venture too far off road with the Range Rover but we did use it on forest and farm tracks.

The Range Rover has now been fitted with ‘Terrain Response’ as fitted to the Discovery 3 and the Range Rover Sport, even the Freelander 2 has a version.

Terrain Response is like having an ‘off road expert’ in car it implements the most appropriate settings for the vehicle’s many advanced electronic controls and traction aids, including ride height, engine torque response, Hill Descent Control, electronic traction control and transmission settings.

The five Terrain Response programmes optimise the vehicles set-up for virtually any on-road or off-road driving conditions:

• General driving
• Grass/gravel/snow (for slippery conditions on-road as well as off)
• Sand
• Mud and ruts

What amazed us about the Range Rover was its ability to climb a wet grassy bank that we could not easily walk up – all we did was select the ‘grass/gravel/snow’ programme via the terrain response system and then we selected low ratio via the gearbox. We then simply drove up the hill with the minimum of fuss on the way down all we did was to ensure that the hill descent control was set and then we took our feet off, letting the Range Rover literally crawl down the slope – under complete control. Again there was absolutely no fuss very impressive indeed.

What was more impressive is that we tried the same feat with the Mercedes Benz GL-420; in similar conditions and although it did manage to conquer the hill it required more driver input.