RANGE ROVER D350

The acid test for this new-generation SUV was always going to be how it copes on and off road in the UK. We now know the answer

- STEVE CROPLEY

TESTED 17.5.22, HEREFORDSHIRE ON SALE NOW PRICE £107,300

And so to the serious stuff. After months of anticipation, a circus of static launches and an elaborate US-based international media drive programme, we're at last able to test the new Range Rover where it matters most.

This week we've driven Land Rover's brand-new flagship on the ancient, pockmarked roads of Britain, widely acknowledged as the most difficult in Europe, and also on the steep, rutted, muddy slopes of the Eastnor Castle estate, where both this latest Range Rover and every one of its four predecessors, reaching back to 1970, was developed. It is the essential evaluation.

Happily, we have the right Range Rover for the job. Our test car is a standard-wheelbase D350 HSE diesel, a version selected several weeks ago by our man Matt Prior as potentially the most capable, most practical model of a complicated line-up - after he drove no fewer than five petrol and diesel, long- and short-wheelbase versions in the US.

Ours is an uncomplicated mission: to cover a day-long route involving 150 miles of on-road driving around southern England, punctuated by about 90 minutes of much tougher testing at Eastnor - in the same vehicle, wearing the same tyres as it tackled A-roads and motorways. Demonstrating road-tyred vehicles on a wide variety of terrain, at speeds from mud crawl to motorway cruise, has always been Land Rover's special way of demonstrating their versatility.

To recap, the new Range Rover, codenamed L460, sits on a new design, mostly aluminium chassis called MLA Flex (curious name for a structure "up to 50% stiffer").

It's strengthened by strategically placed steel components, notably across the front bulkhead and in the body pillars.