RANGE ROVER

Seminal luxury SUV enters a new generation with even more bases to cover than before

- MATT PRIOR

TESTED 5.4.22, CALIFORNIA, US ON SALE NOW PRICE £108,775

TESTER'S NOTE

The four-seat SV has a table that electrically lifts out of the centre tunnel and swivels. It's a nice touch, but I can't help thinking that things will slide off it in motion. MP

This is the fifth-generation Range Rover and, well, it doesn't feel like it needs a reinvention, does it?

While the new Land Rover Defender was a product transformed and the latest Land Rover Discovery went a bit on-piste compared with its predecessor, what we have here is the same luxury car meets SUV - the sort of model the Range Rover helped to define - only more so. More luxury, more refinement, more size. More technology? More price? Put it this way: "Alexa, how much is this new Range Rover I'm sitting in?"

"From £99,375."

Some background, then. The new Range Rover can be had in short-or long-wheelbase forms, and both are larger than the versions they replace.

It rides on a new platform called MLA Flex, 80% aluminium but with a steel bulkhead at the front. There are rings of strengthening steel, too, around the lower body at the A-pillar section, and the whole body at the C-pillars and D-pillars, plus around the edges of the front door apertures. Static torsional rigidity is said to be 33kN per degree up to 50% better than previously.

The Range Rover was a big car before and remains one now. The standard-wheelbase version is 5052mm long, up 75mm on the last one, with a 2997mm wheelbase, and the long-wheelbase variant adds 200mm to those totals. The Bentley Bentayga is 5141mm long, the BMW X7 5151mm. The Range Rover is also wide, at 2209mm across the body - seemingly the same width as across its door mirrors.