Range Rover is still at the top of class

It takes a long time to run out of turns on the road to the California Coast. And they save some of the best for last. The road winds, dips and climbs through the mountains, skirting the edges along impressive vistas that give blue hints of ocean ahead. The drop-offs along the edge of the road promise about a one-minute freefall through time and space, so I take pity on my passengers and ease off the throttle, still taking pleasure in the corner-to-corner rhythm and dance of power and taut performance.

And it occurs to me that I’ve managed to get into sports car mode in a Range Rover, a behemoth that weighs in at more than twice the weight of a sports car (almost 6,000 lbs!). That’s pretty impressive.

“The Range Rover has always been the world’s most complete luxury SUV,” said Matthew Taylor, Land Rover’s managing director. “And with this new, even more refined flagship for the company, we believe that the best luxury SUV in the world is now even better.”

Land Rover started building British utility vehicles after WWII and introduced the top end Range Rover in 1970. From the beginning, the Range Rover attained and held onto its pre-eminent placing as a premier status symbol with an eccentric blend of off-road toughness and interior civility. But you don’t hang onto that kind of status by standing still and, over the years, Land Rover has also steadily improved the Range Rover’s on-road performance, along with constant upgrades to technologies and the luxury level.

The last redesign in 2002 created the most successful Range Rover ever, smoothing the styling, pulling the wheels to the corners and putting to rest forever the toadstool profile of a big body and bigger roof tilting on a small wheelbase.

The design director in the back seat bristles a little when I ask how much of that styling refreshment was BMW-inspired during their brief ownership of the company before Ford added Land Rover to their premier auto group along with Volvo, Jaguar and Aston Martin.

No, he tells me, this new generation Range Rover was purely an in-house redesign although there is no denying the engineering influence that BMW brought to the project.

The proof of that was under the hood. Since 2002, the Range Rover has been powered by BMW’s 4.4L V8, which replaced the earlier anemic English engine.

The BMW motor has served as a good engine but using it was sort of like living together after the divorce. On the one hand, BMW was understandably

reluctant to pass on the latest of its technological developments while competing in the upper classes with the same engine in the BMW X5. And Range Rover needed to make a clean break with an engine from within the Ford family.

All of which explains the real news for the 2006 Range Rover– two new Jaguar-based engines, including a powerful supercharged version.

The naturally-aspirated engine is a 4.4L V8, same displacement as the previous BMW engine, but based on a bored-out version of the Jaguar 4.2L. Rated at 305 hp @ 5750 rpm and 325 lb-ft of torque @ 4000 rpm, this new engine is quicker, more powerful (up 20 hp) and also promises better fuel efficiency.

And, heading the lineup, a supercharged version of Jaguar’s 4.2L engine makes 400 hp and 420 lb-ft of torque. That works out to 35 percent more power and 25 percent more torque than the outgoing engine, with a 0-100 km/h projected to be about a second and a half faster.

Both engines channel the power through a ZF HP26 6-speed automatic that allows driver select sport shifting. The full-time four wheel-drive system includes a new electronically-controlled centre differential and low range gearing, bolstered by a host of stability technologies for true offroad ability.

Land Rover has complimented the 2006 Range Rover’s power modifications with cosmetic tweaks inside and out and bolstered the luxury equipment list.

The grille has been revised, the bumpers remodeled with more aggressive intakes and bracketed by slimmer, wraparound headlamps. Adaptive Bi-Xenon lights that shift with steering direction are a new option.

Subtle exterior changes

The exterior changes are subtle. Likewise, Range Rover takes a page from other performance builders, setting apart its supercharged lineup with bigger boots– 20-inch wheels– and with discreet badging and diamond mesh added to the grille and side gills.

Inside, the cabin is as quiet and comfortable as ever. Quieter in fact, after an increase in added sound-dampening elements. And the Range Rover has been loaded with even more amenities.

New for 2006, Range Rover adds a tire pressure monitoring system, a rear-view camera to assist in backing up and an optional rear entertainment system with 6-DVD changer and screens mounted in the back of the front seat headrests.

Which allows, as my co-driver said, “everything from Sponge Bob to Spiderman” including auxiliary plug-ins in case one of your kids wants to play games while the other watches a movie.

“Wow, with all this new technology, I guess you’ve probably got rid of the old 6CD cartridge in the glove box and gone to an in-dash system, right?” I asked.

Wrong. But at least it’s not under the passenger seat anymore. And what would a Range Rover be without one or two jarring British eccentricities?

And, certainly, Range Rover does come through with a list of technologies too long to mention that covers every aspect from safety and security to performance and passenger comfort.

The new 2006 Range Rover takes the ultimate in luxury and status and gives it the power it deserves, especially in supercharged form. And the pump up in power pushes the Range Rover out of its traditional status niche into a new area of competition where it can playoff against other upper class performers like Mercedes’ AMG M-Class and Porsche Cayenne.

Range Rover’s new accent on performance will be bolstered even more with the Range Rover Sport, a more youthful expression of supercharged elitism, due for release in the near future.

(this article was written by Rob Beintema for The Brampton Guardian)

This entry was posted on Friday, October 28th, 2005 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.