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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.