CLAIM OF THRONES

The Range Rover has the queen of all celebrity endorsements: our monarch chooses to drive one. Is the latest example worthy of royal assent?

- OLLIE KEW

On the weekend Her Majesty The Queen turned 96 years old, she was photographed touring her Sandringham estate not in a horse-drawn golden carriage or her custom Bentley limousine, but in a Range Rover. The Queen has had tens of Landies over the decades, but her favoured car to drive oneself in is a Rangie.

Since her current model is a 58-plate, the Queen's almost certainly waiting to see if the new 2022 Range Rover is any good before deciding whether or not to upgrade. Ma'am, we're only too happy to oblige. Take a throne, feet up on the corgis and we'll discover if the fifth generation of the world's most iconic luxury 4x4 has done enough to earn the Royal House of Top Gear's official seal of approval, which we've just invented.

01 CAN ONE STILL GO OFF ROAD?

Authenticity. Sums up all Land Rovers in a word, that. Even if the toughest terrain they'll ever tackle is the owner's pumice gravel driveway, it's a Land Rover's USP (and curse) to have to embody a 'climb every mountain, ford every stream' attitude. The new Range Rover, as we've become used to, employs clever 'Terrain Response II' traction and stability control whizzbangery that reacts to whatever all 2.4 tonnes are rolling across or wading through, locking differentials and adjusting throttle and gearbox behaviour on the fly.

What you're not used to is a Range Rover that's not a 4x4. So long as the temperature's above a balmy 3°C and your speed is between 21 and 100 miles per hour, the new Rangie runs in rear-wheel drive, to reduce friction and emissions. Once it detects an unbeaten track - or you fiddle with the beautifully rendered mode screen - all four wheels are immediately powered. Any transition is as imperceptible as a butler's cough.