Range Rover 350 HSE

Our time is over with this luxury SUV, but did it prove a master of all trades, or was it too big for its boots?

- Darren Moss

WHEN I WAS a boy, my favourite bedtime story was the fable about the town mouse and the country mouse. The moral of this is that you should take what you need over what you want, but I loved hearing about the differences between the two mice - one who lived in the splendour of the city, and the other in the greenery of the countryside. And after living with my Range Rover for the past few months, I think there should have been a third mouse with a paw in both camps.

You see, my Range Rover has proved to be as at home in the urban sprawl as it is in the rough stuff - sometimes within the same 24-hour period. The night before I took it to one of Land Rover's experience centres to test the car's off-road abilities, for example, it ferried my parents and their considerable luggage to the airport in quiet comfort and no little style. It is, after all, a big, prestigious SUV, and I strongly suspect no one who saw it that night would have guessed that it would be caked in mud and clay the next day, having conquered every off-road challenge I'd set in its way.