► We live with the new Range Rover
► This month: how clean is the interior?
► It’s a diesel! Month 3 here
There’s a radio, and CarPlay of course. But for me one of the great joys of driving is time out from the world – enforced meditation over miles and hours. A chance to breathe, to tune out, to just be.
Hard agree? Then be assured a Range Rover is one of the very finest vehicles in which to just be. ‘Well, newsflash! Ben, dear boy, Range Rovers have been this way for generations,’ I hear you say. And you’d be right.
But as too many brands have chased sportiness, so cars that truly waft have become, if not endangered species, then at least rare enough to feel special when you find one.
Yes, this Range Rover gained rear-wheel steering, with a predictably transformative effect on its manoeuvrability in tight spaces. The system’s also given it some semblance of agility on hilly, twisty B-roads (plenty of those on this month’s mission to the Trough of Bowland). But comfort is clearly still king, the Range Rover unimpressed should you try to stick with any of the hard-driving locals. (Switching drive modes to beef up the body control is the blind-reach work of a moment, but you ditch the pillowy-softness.)
Of course, the payoff is sublime rolling refinement at all speeds, remarkably well suppressed wind noise given the car’s bluff frontage and splendid panoramic views in which to lose yourself for a moment or two (ideally, you’ll be in the passenger seat at this point).
I’ve long coveted group editor Phil McNamara’s D350 Range Rover, and this trip presented a decent enough reason to propose a swap. That I’d then hold onto the thing for the best part of a month was never part of the plan, honestly…
The Range Rover was a pleasure every second of the 550-mile weekend, with space enough for two dogs (one established, one new) and for all our actual baggage. The mental baggage we left at home.
Logbook: Range Rover D350 HSE (Month 4)
Price £113,120 (£128,180 as tested)
Performance 2997cc turbodiesel six-cylinder, 345bhp, 516lb ft, 6.1sec 0-62mph, 145mph
Efficiency 37.2mpg (official), 34.3mpg (tested), 207g/km CO2
Energy cost 21.0p per mile
Miles this month 563
Total miles 16,121