Range Rover 3.6 TDV8 Review & Road Test (2010) Part 2

The Range Rover has one of the world's great car interiors.

In part 2 of our review and road test of the Range Rover TDV8 Autobiography, we examine why the Range Rover is much greater than the sum of its parts.

After 40 years of Range Rover, buyers know that the Range Rover stands alone. There is no other car that can do Grouse Moor and Kensington Palace; McDonald’s and Waterside Inn; ferrying children and ferrying Royalty; Polo on Windsor Lawn and cricket on the beach – all with nothing more than a car wash in between.

There is no other car that can deliver such a feeling of absolute ease with its abilities. The elevated driving position – no one does it like Range Rover – is intoxicating. The seats are wonderfully comfortable; air conditioned and heated and infinitely adjustable. High quality materials abound in a cabin that couldn’t get any better.

So relaxing is driving the Range Rover that you don’t feel the need to hustle, although the Range Rover can hustle much better these days than ever before. The 3.6 TDV8 has a big lump of torque which does a very good job of throwing the Range Rover at the horizon with a prod of your right foot.

It’s perhaps not so great at sending the Range Rover round bends, certainly not with the alacrity of the Range Rover Sport but, if you’re sensible and accurate, you can make surprising progress on the twisty stuff. But you don’t want to, at least not unless you have to be somewhere on time, and if that’s the case the Range Rover is able to get you there. Relaxed and refreshed.

“You want to sit back in the armchair that passes for a driver’s seat and smile benignly as the world passes by. You want to reflect on the fact that you’re driving what is – by any measure – one of the greatest cars in the world.”

The Range Rover can also take you to places a car has no right to go. Ánd you don’t even need to know what you’re doing any more – beyond having a modicum of common sense – so good is Land Rover’s Terrain Response. The twist of a dial and you can do snow or mud ruts or sand or rocks or… just about anything you can think of. We managed them all – except snow – in a week and a thousand miles without the Range Rover missing a beat. Or my heart rate rising. But you don’t even really want to do that

What you do want to do is wallow in the ‘Special-ness’ of the Range Rover. You want to sit back in the armchair that passes for a driver’s seat and smile benignly as the world passes by. You want to reflect on the fact that you’re driving what is – by any measure – one of the greatest cars in the world.

Unfortunately, this is supposed to be a review, so we have to try and pick holes. But it’s so difficult to pick holes in an icon; still harder when the icon is still relevant and is constantly being made better with a nip here and a tuck there. But there are things you’d like to nudge to be slightly more appealing.

Fuel economy is never going to be brilliant when you’re fuelling something that weighs the same as the Albert Hall. And I’m convinced that most buyers opt for the diesel instead of the petrol in the UK simply because the range is so much better, rather than any real concerns about the cost of refuelling.

In a week of very mixed motoring we only just bettered 21mpg when the official average is 25mpg. To achieve- in the real world – 25mpg would be great and would increase the Range Rover’s range by 25%. And the 3.6 litre TDV8 can be a bit harsh if pushed hard, especially when cold.

So not much to moan about, just the range and a bit of noise from the oily bits under some circumstances. And coincidentally, the new 4.4 litre TDV8 is both quieter and more economical than the 3.6.

The best will get even better.