Land Rover Range Rover

Our verdict

The Range Rover is an icon and we don’t use the word as glibly as some. A long history has delivered some lemons, but the current generation Rangie is the best yet – comfort, understated style, luxury. If you’re in the market for a large posh saloon, take a wildcard ride in a Rangie before you buy an S-class.

Comfort

If you fancy something other than a large limo, try a Range Rover. The ride is one of the best in class, killing bumps and massacring road imperfections, especially in the variants with higher aspect-ratio tyres. The supercharged V8 is trying to be sporty and loses some of the comfort, which is a shame.

Performance

If you want a reasonable and refined Rangie then the 3.6-litre V8 diesel is hard to beat; 268bhp, 0-62mph in 9.2 and 124mph is probably all you'll ever need in such a big car. If you don't care about fuel bills, then take a punt on either the normally aspirated 4.4 V8 or the 4.2-litre supercharged - the forced induction car is genuinely fast for its size with 0-62mph coming up in just 7.5 seconds and with a 130mph top end.

Cool

Billionaires and pop stars, rappers and English landowners all rate the Range Rover. You should too. It's the most regal 4x4 out there.

Quality

Land Rover has banished the quality gremlins with the latest Range Rover. Well, almost; early air-suspension niggles should now be sorted. The interior is simply superb, great finishes and top end design make it a fabulous place to spend time - you will genuinely never get bored of sitting in here.

Handling

A real surprise. Very little body roll (air suspension again) and a totally surefooted stance mean that you can clip along at a respectable pace -it's bulky, but you'll be surprised by its nimble reactions. Off-road the Range Rover is still well up with the best thanks to Land Rover's ‘Terrain Response' system which alters throttle maps and traction control to give you the best possible grip - only subsequently hampered by road-biased tyres. The steering's slightly numb, but we'll forgive it that when parking.

Practicality

The split tailgate means that you can spread a picnic on the back when out charging around doing country pursuits. When not persuing the country, you can take advantage of massive space for five, a 535-litre boot and the knowledge that if you were to fold the seats down, you'd have 2091litres to play with. You won't be delivering many washing machines, but it's nice to know that you could

Running costs

 Don't be fooled into thinking that the premium-priced Range Rover doesn't come with a premium-priced ownership tax. The diesel only really gets mid-20s for mpg, and the supercharged car will dip into single figures if you get enthusiastic. Insurance is high (16-18, diesel- supercharged) and you'll get stung for the max 35-percent company car tax.