Everyone knows, or thinks they do, that the Range Rover has always been a superb car both on the road and off-road. That was after all the thinking behind the original iteration launched more than half a century ago – a more civilised Land Rover that could work in the country estate and look smart in town. This rare blend of skills, its status as the first of its kind, plus a fair dose of snob value has ensured its enduring success, under successive management and corporate ownership. Currently, it’s under the stewardship (with Jaguar) of Tata, the giant Indian industrial conglomerate, with commendable, though overdue, plans to completely electrify the range. The greening can’t come quickly enough.
Now, in its fifth generation, the Range Rover still does all of the things it used to do, but these days the car can be best enjoyed in an underground car park with big concrete pillars standing sentinel around extremely tight corners. In the past, such environments became increasingly challenging for the ever-larger versions of the Range Rover that came out (the 1970 original looked like it could fit in the boot when stood next to its great-grandchildren). Indeed, it got so bad that parking became an almost impossible task, seriously eroding the vehicle’s famed multipurpose credentials. You’d be doing five-point turns and hoping not to scrape that expensive bodywork.
