2013 Range Rover Review

So what you really  want to know is how it feels to drive a Range Rover with nobody in it. Compared with the outgoing Range Rover, that’s how this new one should feel: empty, unladen. By building what it describes as the world’s first SUV with an all-aluminum unibody, Land Rover has cut a claimed 700 pounds from its flagship; that’s the mass of five average-size Europeans or 4.1 Americans.Can you feel the difference? Definitely. This new model is a milestone in industry efforts to arrest the death-spiral of ever-increasing weight, complexity, and consumption that has afflicted the SUV more than most. Automakers’ hands might have been forced by public opinion and fierce governmental fuel-economy and emissions rules, but let’s not argue with the result: better cars for us to drive. And few demonstrate the myriad benefits of making a vehicle lighter and stiffer as dramatically as Land Rover has with this new Range Rover.




Although ownership now rests with India’s Tata Motors and the very element from which it’s crafted has changed, this remains a Range Rover, true to a clear, bright set of styling and engineering principles that have been followed consistently since 1970. Successfully, too. In its last full year of production, the 10-year-old outgoing model defied the usually immutable laws of automotive sales gravity by posting an astonishing 21-percent global sales increase.

Land Rover wasn’t going to mess with that formula, and it hasn’t. Despite the diet, it’s still the ultimate luxury off-roader—dispatching challenging terrain, dispatched to nights at the opera. And it still hews to design attributes that have always made driving one a distinctive experience: the throne-like, command driving position; the squared-off, castellated front corners; the clamshell hood; the side gills; and the flying body-colored roof.

It’s all there in the new one, of course, and it looks good in aluminum. But the styling—overseen by design director and chief creative officer Gerry McGovern—doesn’t have quite the impact of the previous model, either by comparison with its peers or in its simple physical presence. The old car looked as bluff and upright as the White Cliffs of Dover. Here’s a gentler, softer, more sculpted, less arrogant Range Rover. It’s also the most aerodynamic version ever, though that’s hardly saying much.

Same story inside. The cabin lacks the quantum-leap aspect the outgoing model had when it arrived, but it is improved. Its materials and construction make the old Range Rover feel toylike and dated. The steering wheel in particular, with its thin rim, leather-wrapped center, and gorgeous aluminum turrets holding the controls, could grace a Bentley. Although the new Range Rover is a tech-fest, the switch count has been cut in half and the central touch screen offers simple, intuitive control of a lot of  complex systems. The view out is as imperious as ever—aluminum hasn’t made the pillars any fatter—and there’s now real lounging room in the rear, the lack of which had been a problem particularly in booming but largely chauffeur-driven China. Criticisms? Not many. The front seat-bottoms are a bit flat, and the paddles for the eight-speed ZF auto ’box (otherwise controlled by a Jaguar-like dial) feel flimsy.

You start the Range Rover Supercharged and do what any proper human being would: Give the largely unchanged 510-hp, 461-lb-ft supercharged 5.0-liter V-8 the full cherries to see how your empty SUV reacts. It’s still not exactly light at 5250 pounds, but the immediacy and near violence of  the reaction is extraordinary, the car throwing its nose up like a small jet and just exploding down the road like a sports sedan (the engine, after all, is shared with Jaguar). We estimate that 60 mph will arrive in 4.4 seconds, nearly a second faster than before, and overtaking distances are radically compressed. Yet it also claims an mpg gain of  9 percent.




So you do that a few times and then calm down, and start to notice other benefits of that lighter, stiffer unibody, such as the quick, alert steering or the astonishing air-sprung ride quality, which manages to be both connected and isolated at once. There’s still a little “topple” when making swift directional changes: The adaptive damping and dynamic anti-roll bars do their best to minimize it but to kill it completely  would probably ruin the car’s suppleness elsewhere.

It’s most remarkable off-road; we spent all day driving the supercharged model on ungraded tracks in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco and stepped out feeling like we’d done L.A. to San Diego on the freeway. The stiffer shell allows the chassis components to work better, and it more effectively absorbs the big impacts that do make it through so there’s no creaking or groaning or twisting from the structure. The off-road ability improves, with its just-under-three-foot wading depth (up nearly eight inches), greater ground clearance, and steeper approach and departure angles. It will go farther than your nerve will take it, and the classic Range Rover chasm between the calm luxury of  the cabin and the absurd, mountain-goat abilities of  the chassis seems wider than ever.

Range Rover created the posh, all-terrain niche for itself, but today some of the toniest badges in the world go out in public wearing SUV mukluks—and others are coming (see Bentley, Lamborghini, Maserati, etc.). Maybe you don’t buy into the whole luxury-off-roader thing. Maybe you find it absurd and flagrant. But you have to acknowledge the feat of engineering that gives a car such a colossal span of ability. For that alone, this new Range Rover contends for that endlessly debated “world’s best” title. It really is that good. We should all go on such a diet

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