Range Rover review: In this range it remains the benchmark

It is said that money doesn’t buy happiness, but it upgrades despair beautifully.

Indeed, the Irish playwright Sean O’Casey put the same sentiment into the following words: “Money does not make you happy, but it quiets the nerves.” 

Wealthy people, as we know, like to show they have it and aside from houses, land, aircraft, yachts and in the case of a certain millionaire from the Blackrock Road, a kitchen island the size of Sicily, often their gelt is spent on cars.

For Reggie and his ilk, there are few better illustrations of your financial wellbeing than what you drive, but even at the stratospheric end of the financial sphere, choosing the wrong vehicle can be dangerous and misguided.

Being seen in blingy supercars in Puerta Banus, or Juan-les-Pins — or even Caherdaniel — in high season is one thing, but owning one tends to put one in the same category as portly and loud ‘wealth’ managers, Middle Eastern grifters, or drug dealers.

At the other end of the rich car list, you can have your Rolls, or your Aston, but you’re still going to look like a twat to everyone apart from those who also own such things.

No, the key to being really wealthy and looking good pretty much is a reserve of one brand If you don’t want to appear vulgar: Range Rover.

Now in its fifth generation — the L460 — the Range Rover has, since its introduction in 1969, been a staple vehicle for the landed upper crust and has gestated down the years into something far from the humble utilitarian entity it was originally envisaged as. 

Originally only a two-door, it was upmarket by comparison with the Land Rovers that preceded it, what with vinyl seats and plastic interiors designed to be washed down with a hose.

Since then, of course the ‘Chelsea Tractor’ as it became known to generations of upper-class twits in London, has moved ineffably upmarket to the point where even the late Queen was seen driving various models of Range Rover while holidaying in Sandringham and Balmoral, or wherever.

This royal stamp of approval was all that was necessary to mark the Range Rover out as something to have and to be seen in and underscored the car’s rise to be the best way of looking good without appearing to be in any way ostentatious. 

The fact that it could also cross deserts, ford swollen rivers, traverse bogs and pull a trailer with 20 heifers in it, was almost incidental.

A style icon

In the four generations which have preceded this week’s tester, the Range Rover has effortlessly manoeuvred itself into being not only an agricultural necessity, but a stye icon like few others.

The new one has softened the edges in as much as possible by comparison with the previous one (the L405) and now looks to be a much smoother beast than before. 

Defining styling cues such as the trademark ‘floating roof’ are in place, but stuff like flush-fitting lights front and rear, flush door handles, and a new light bar integrated into the front bumper are all new.

It’s bigger too than previously in every dimension and, to be honest, it looks it. Standing beside it, the Range Rover is truly an imposing beast, as you will discover when you try to get in. 

It is not that you have clamber in an ungainly fashion, just that it takes a little co-ordination and dexterity to perform the operation in a dignified manner.

So too the exodus manoeuvre. I’m not a particularly short person — or that tall either — but you need to swing your legs out and down to exit and even then, it will be a little time before your feet hit the ground. 

You feel a little like one of those clown cowboys you see at rodeos who slide from their horses rather than dismounting properly.

But once you are aboard you will immediately be consumed by the sumptuousness of it all. Front and rear passengers are exquisitely catered for, both in terms of roominess and comfort levels.

The boot could also be used as an ancillary stage at Glastonbury this weekend, so commodious is it. 

On the road, the size of the car is an initial concern — not just the relationship between you and the rest of the road users, but the manner in which the Range Rover goes about its business.

Being the size of a London bus is all very well, but how does it corner and handle? Well, normally you’d expect it to lean like a drunken hippo into corners and wobble uncontrollably like a similar artiodactyl species (if there were any left) out of them.

But, whatever juju physics the engineers have employed here, the Range Rover does neither and its nimbleness on the road is astonishing for something its size. 

The chassis control work that’s been done here is astounding and the dynamic calibration work that’s been done to make it as easy to place on the road and its willingness to turn in to corners equally impressive.

And when you think that there is 440 bhp on tap here, the 0-100 km/h time is achieved in just six seconds dead and top speed is 225 km/h — all in a two-and-a-half tonne monster — it is all quite breathtaking.

The engine in the model tested — the three-litre Si6 PHEV 440 HSE, to be specific — is a three-litre, in-line six cylinder with a 105 kW electric motor and a 31.8 kWh battery and the system provides a nearly seamless and noiseless driving experience. The eight-speed ‘box is a joy and 4WD is standard.

For what it’s worth the electric-only range of 114 km is on the good side of worthy, but probably won’t matter a fig to potential owners who can use the PHEV element of the car to advertise their environmental concerns.

I only have the space here to touch on some of the technology that has been employed in this car, but suffice to say it is unbelievably impressive, but one bit worth mentioning is the four wheel steering system which has been employed to make the car more manoeuvrable in tight spaces and make it possible to park it in a multistorey car park without making an idiot of yourself, or shaving lumps off the car itself.

The last version was pretty impressive, but this one blows the doors off that. It is way more capable on the road and hugely impressive in the manner in which it delivers driving satisfaction. Quite simply this is a benchmark car.

English essayist and writer Maurice Baring once said: “if you would know what the Lord God thinks of money, you only have to look at those to whom he gives it.” They drive a Range Rover.