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New Range Rover facts
THE ALL-NEW RANGEROVER
New from the ground up, the fifth-generation Range Rover has been eagerly awaited. It’s fair to say James Batchelor is among those rather excited about it...
Smooth
A key feature of the smooth, minimalist styling are the windows. They’re completely flush, with no obvious window surrounds
Land Rover has pulled the covers off its longawaited new flagship SUV, the Range Rover.
Arriving early next year, the reinvented luxury SUV is only the fifth new Range Rover since the model debuted in 1970. It launches with a range of electrified engines plus new technology, with a pure-electric version arriving in 2024.
The new Range Rover comes in standard and long wheelbase (LWB) forms. The latter, for the first time, will also be offered as a seven-seater.
Topping the line-up is the Range Rover SV. Developed by Jaguar Land Rover’s Special Vehicle Operations division, it’s designed to take the fight to the Rolls-Royce Cullinan.
Prices start at £94,400 for the D300 diesel, rising to more than £137,000 for the First Edition powered by a new BMW-sourced V8 petrol engine.
Platform
The fifth-generation Range Rover also sits on a new platform called MLA-Flex. It’s for this reason that the Range Rover is able to come in plug-in hybrid and full-electric versions.
4-,5- and 7-seaters
Standard and long wheelbase versions can be specified with four seats rather than the usual five, while the LWB can come with seven full-sized seats. Buyers can also have two ‘executive’ seats with extra TV screens and other luxuries.
Terrain Response 2 gives maximum off-road capability. The Range Rover can also ford up to 900mm of water, and there’s an active locking rear differential as well. The all-wheeldrive system is in permanent fourwheel-drive mode when the car is travelling off road, pulling away from a standstill, in cold weather and at speeds above 100mph. It still has the trademark, throne-like, elevated driving position, but now there’s also a large 13.1-inch curved touchscreen in the centre of the dashboard, air vents that always remain straight and level no matter which direction they’re facing, and wood veneers crafted using techniques learnt from cabinet-makers.
Technology
There’s a Cabin Air Purification Pro system to stop nasty bacteria from entering the car, active noise cancellation, Amazon Alexa and softwareover-the-air updates. Also, there’s a remote parking system that allows the driver to manoeuvre the Range Rover in and out of spaces from their smartphone while standing up to three metres away, and every Range Rover has all-wheel steering.
Power
The Range Rover gets a selection of new or recently introduced engines. There are 3.0-litre straight-six mild-hybrid petrol and diesels, two plug-in hybrids and a forthcoming pureelectric version.
Electrified
Two plug-in hybrids are offered, both using a 3.0-litre straight-six petrol engine mated to a 38.2kWh battery and a 140bhp electric motor. The pure EV range is up to 62 miles and CO2 emissions are 30g/km. A pureelectric Range Rover (Land Rover’s first EV) will arrive in 2024.
Styling
Land Rover’s designers have shunned the temptation to radically overhaul the classic Range Rover look and instead have focused on paring down the styling. The front end has a similar look but the rear end is unlike any other Range Rover, with ‘hidden-until-lit’ lights.
Electric doors
The new Range Rover’s doors can be opened and closed automatically by pressing a button inside or on the door, or by using the car’s touchscreen. The driver’s door can even close by itself when the brake pedal is pushed.
Handling
Every Range Rover gets ‘Dynamic Response Pro’ – an electronic active roll control system that continually optimises the front and rear anti-roll bars to prevent roll and encourage quicker corner responses. There’s also a new air suspension system that reads the road for potholes ahead, plus torque vectoring by braking to enhance ability and grip on twisty roads.
Tailgate
Always a Range Rover hallmark, the split tailgate is present and correct on the new car. Buyers can also choose the ‘Tailgate Event Suite’, which turns the tailgate into luxurious seating for two people.
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What goes up must come down
When it comes to the current unprecedented buoyancy in the used luxury and supercar market, will the drop be sudden and steep or gentle and gradual?
Darren Selig, founder and chief commercial officer of high-end vehicle finance lender JBR Capital, reflects on the massive surge in demand for and value of prestige cars over the past 12 months and gives his insight into how he sees the market playing out.
We’ve all heard the expression ‘What goes up must come down’. It might be a bit of an old chestnut, but gravity and market forces prove its validity time and time again.
Most automotive retailers say the uptake started when they began click-and-collect services post the first lockdown in June 2020 and continued throughout the year. Reopening their showrooms again in April 2021 has done nothing to stem the tide and retailers continue to service pent-up demand in the market. For us at JBR Capital, things in fact took off in March 2021. In an average, pre-pandemic month, we processed 350 applications for finance for customers wishing to purchase cars priced from £25,000 and above. Now we are seeing more than 550 applications every month, and volumes continue to grow across high-end cars as well as the luxury end of the volume market.
We’ve just enjoyed our most successful business period ever since the business was launched at the start of 2015, lending £130m since March 1 and enabling customers to fund their passion for supercars and luxury vehicles. Used prestige car values are up by around 30 per cent compared with the start of the year, but where will they be 12 months from now?
That depends on what happens to a range of unprecedented factors currently affecting the market. Some of them, such as the fulfilment of pent-up demand and global semiconductor shortage, which is causing a shortfall in new cars, will abate. Others, such as Brexit, which has forced UK car enthusiasts to purchase at home rather than in Europe and incur higher import taxes, will remain constant. Prices of UK-registered desirable, limited-run left-hand-drive-only supercars are now very firm indeed, for instance – even taking the rest of the market into account. Other factors, such as customers’ desire to procure a petrol-power super or hypercar representing the pinnacle of ICE engineering, are likely to increase, at least until the curtain comes down on car fossil-fuelled sales in the UK in 2030.
I can’t see the current market situation changing significantly over the next 12 months. There is no oversupply in the used market – quite the opposite in fact, as dealers struggle to find the right quality of used stock – so no top-end dealer is likely to be left ‘holding the baby’.
But demand and values cannot keep rising indefinitely of course, and the market should remain cautious. Eventually, with the global semiconductor shortage resolved, manufacturers will return to higher production levels. But provided they don’t flood the market with new models – something virtually impossible in the supercar and luxury sector anyway – demand for used cars is likely to remain strong for the next year. Given unforeseen disruption, like Martians landing on the White House lawn, I suspect that we will see subtle signs of a correction and the beginning of a return to normalcy, or at least a new normalcy by 2023. But hopefully, what has gone up will come down very slowly and very gently.
