February
Range Rover TDV6 Vogue SE
**Week ending February 28
Mileage 13,620
Miles this week 520****
Now that our Range Rover is heading towards its first 16,000 mile service, I’ve started to notice an improvement in fuel economy.
It’s always been good for such a goliath, mind you, and much better than the old Rangie V8 diesel that we ran before. But on longer runs, the new TDV6 has stepped up even further.
Last week, I had a business trip in Manchester, which meant a 400-mile round trip exclusively at the sort of motorway speeds you can manage when it’s fairly chokka. The final readout was 36mpg, which is astonishing for a car like this. Even more so when you consider that when the V6 diesel was a little less loose, it was returning numbers in the early thirties.
By Chas Hallett
Chas.Hallett@whatcar.com
**Week ending February 21
Mileage 13,100
Miles this week 170****
****Read the Range Rover review**
My colleague Gavin runs our parent company’s exhibitions business. But more interestingly to What Car?, he is also a serial Range Rover buyer.
He’s now on his fifth - a V8 diesel of the last generation - and is seriously contemplating upgrading again. It seemed clear that it would be useful to get this in-house connoisseur’s take the latest model we’ve got on our long term fleet: the V6 diesel in Vogue SE trim.
Interestingly, Gavin’s main praise was reserved for the way the new one drives. ‘In a straight line, you barely notice the difference,’ he said, ‘but in bends, it doesn’t roll and wallow anymore. You can feel that it’s much lighter.’
He also felt that the electric tailgate of our car would make it easier to live with, not to mention the position of the horn on the steering wheel as, ‘I can never find mine fast enough’.
All in all, it was a big thumbs up. But will he be trading up? ‘I’d like to, but not before I’ve sampled the new Range Rover Sport’. Either way, it seems like Gavin is on course for his sixth Range Rover.
By Chas Hallett
Chas.Hallet@whatcar.com
**Week ending February 14
Mileage 12,930
Miles this week 310****
****Read the Range Rover review**
I live within a stone’s throw of the Thames. Thankfully, my little corner of South West London hasn’t yet been blighted by floods, although the prospect right now seems inevitable.
So naturally I’ve been thinking about the wading depth of our Range Rover. I’ve driven a Rangie in water before - not ours mind you - and the trick is to get in slowly and then keep moving so you create a bow wave, and therefore decrease the risk of water ingress.
How deep can you go, though? According to official Land Rover guidelines the max depth is 900mm, so just under a metre, which got me thinking how that compares with rivals.
The Toyota Land Cruiser V8, another proper 4x4 if there ever was one, can go to 700mm. The Porsche Cayenne and BMW X5 could only cope with a maximum of 500mm worth of Thames water.
So, if I do join the other poor blighters in flood hit Britain, it seems that I’ve got at least a fighting chance of driving out of it.
By Chas Hallett
Chas.Hallett@whatcar.com
**Week ending February 7
Mileage 12,620
Miles this week 220****
****Read the Range Rover review**
We usually dread it when a test car arrives wearing larger-than-standard alloy wheels. Yes, they often look better with more metal and rubber filling out the wheelarches, but the penalty you often pay is a reduction in suppleness and more lumps, bumps and noise coming into the cabin.
That’s why I feared for our Range Rover wearing 22-inch wheels when the standard-issue alloys are 20s. This wasn’t the company’s mistake - I was cajoled into ordering these (expensive) extras by Land Rover’s design maestro, Gerry McGovern. He told me that his creation looks even better with the larger wheels.
Gerry is right, of course, and I was wrong to think that it would be too detrimental to the Range Rover’s ride. Sure, it feels a little lumpier on the pockmarked urban streets I use every day, but it’s barely troubling - and when cruising, I can’t detect any impairment.
By Chas Hallett
Chas.Hallett@whatcar.com
