For many, the Land Rover Range Rover is the ultimate go anywhere, do anything vehicle.
I mean, there aren't many places on dry land that you can't get in a Range Rover with a little bit of patience and a lot of preparation.
But it's also a very refined vehicle on the inside that you can spray down at the end of the day of off-roading in Valley Park at the finest restaurant without the need to be embarrassed.
Now this 2013 model takes a step closer towards refinement by moving from a truck-based body on frame
to a monocot uni-body that's more car-like.
But in the process, has it lost any of that off speed cred.
I'm Antoine Goodwin.
Let's take a look at this 2013 Land Rover Range Rover Supercharged and try to find out.
Now up front here, we've got new headlights that are more Range Rover Evoque inspired and they wrap around and in the middle, more closely integrate with the front grill.
I like
that.
Generally speaking though, the proportions and lines of the vehicle are still classic Range Rover.
You'll definitely know that this is a Rover when you see it going down the street.
You've got the classic front overhangs that are very short.
Outback, we've got a little bit of a longer overhang to make room for your space here in the back.
But you'll see that the angle here is very steep.
So that you still get those very good approach and departure angles when you actually wanna take this thing off-road.
Now underneath this clam shell hood, we've got a 5-Liter Aluminum Block V8 engine.
Now by building the engine out of aluminum, you save weight, which is good because in a vehicle of this size, every pound matters.
Now on top of that engine we've got a supercharger that's 4-feet to get air through 2 intakes.
Power is outputted at about 510 horsepower, 461-pound feet of torque.
That's nothing to sniff your nose out.
What's interesting
here is that if you look closely you can see also that we've got some of the pneumatic lines for the adaptive air suspension.
You got the left rear, the left front, the right rear, the right front.
Everything is kind of compact and run-off of the engine.
So when you raise and lower the height of the vehicle which will get you in a second, you don't actually need a separate compressor.
Now the EPA estimates that you'll get about 15 miles per gallon over a combined cycle in city or highway.
I actually got 15.1
which in my books, pretty good.
Now power from that V8 engine's kinda come through an 8-speed automatic transmission that you'll control with this knob right here.
It's the shift knob and it's interesting because it's actually a knob that you twist.
It rises up out of the center console when you power the vehicle up.
This is pretty much part-spin Jaguar Land Rover stuff, but I really like it.
You've also got pedal shifters here on the back of the steering wheel and it's interesting because with the menu here on the dashboard, you can disable them
when you're in the regular drive mode and don't want to be shifting around.
That's gonna keep you from accidentally downshifting when you kinda just wanna, you know, get around the parking structure.
I like that ability.
A little bit further down the center console, we have all the controls for Land Rovers Terrain Response two system-- even automatic mode that pretty much handles and evaluates the road as you drive along and does all the shifting of power between front and rear, left and right on its own.
When things get a little rocky or a little muddy,
you can hit that auto button, it'll pop up into a knob and from here you have the ability to select programs for different types of terrain.
You've got gravel and snow, you've got rutted roads, you've got sand, you've also got rock climbing.
You put it in any of those modes and the LCD screen will tell you everything that you need to know about what kind of terrain you're on.
It will also give you onscreen prompts of as far as any other settings that you may have to make that it can't automatically make.
Additionally, our vehicle is equipped with air suspension
system with four different levels of height adjustment.
The standard adjustment is which you're gonna drive around town in.
There's also an access mode that will actually lower the vehicle down closer to the ground, makes it easier to get in to and out of and it keeps you from scraping your roof when you go through parking structures.
There are also two off-road levels that will raise it up above the standard ride height for a little bit more ground clearance.
Now on the dashboard we've got the hard drive base navigation system.
This too is also kinda part spin Jaguar
Land Rover.
It's pretty good-- not my favorite system in the world.
The graphics are good, but the ways the menus are set up, a lot of the features that you would wanna access on a daily basis such as searching for destination, searching for a gas station.
These things are hidden under multiple levels of menus.
What's not standard is our 19 speaker, 825-watt Meridian Surround Sound stereo.
This is actually a pretty good system.
And I think it's worth the cost of entry.
You've also got a number of
cameras on our vehicle which is equipped with the vision package that gives you on the front of the vehicle, a front facing camera that gives you 90-degree views in either direction from the front bumper which is good for when you're nosing out of a blind alley.
The problem with this system though is you've also got other cameras that are hidden under a menu.
You've got these sort of side curb cameras that kinda function like Nissan or Infiniti's bird's eye view camera.
But you can't actually get to them unless you dive
into a menu.
So our vehicle's also equipped with a comfort package that's going to add heated and cooled seats to the front row, that's gonna give you a three-zone climate control and it's also going to add a massage function.
You can hop into a menu and then you've got a dive into another menu where you control intensity and you can set timers and set different programs, but it's a lot of button pressing on the screen when you should actually be driving.
Now you may be tempted to enact a no food or drink from the car row since that nice of an interior,
but you may wanna make an allowance for drinks so you could take advantage of the refrigerator in the center console.
For the Range Rover Supercharged is at home, on the road, but it is more at home off over the road, we're gonna do a little bit of that.
We're doing some graveling.
Don't really wanna call this off-roading.
I know people whose driveways are rougher than these.
Now again as I said the Terrain Management System,
it's second generation and it's pretty much right now analyzing the ground below me.
So it's like one wheel gets a little bit of slip, there's one wheel kinda dips down into a rut.
It's constantly analyzing the road beneath me in order to give me the best available grip, without me having to do a lot of fiddling around with different drive modes.
Now terrain-- our situation underneath me gets too precarious.
I can actually select those individual drive modes
to kinda get a sort of a preset of what it should expect to do.
So there is a lot to like about this vehicle's off-road capabilities.
It just handles everything with stride and it handles all of these things, again in its automatic mode.
Now I really wanted to kinda climb up a mountain or scramble up a gravelly hill.
I can-- I actually still have those-- the load transfer mode.
I can lock the differential.
I can
do a lot of different things in order to kind of increase the-- what all they call the off-road survivability of this vehicle.
And all of that is happening outside of the vehicle while inside, I'm enjoying the massage seats, the heated seating-- seated surfaces, the air conditioning, I could be listening to the premium audio system.
I'm very isolated from everything that's happening outside of the fact that you know, I'm getting kinda shaking around a little bit, but you know it can't really be helped.
Now to roll-off of the lot in a brand new 2013 Range Rover Supercharged is gonna cost you about 99,100 bucks.
That's before a $100 California emissions charge and about $895 in destinations charge.
Now our example here has $11,000 worth of options added on top of that-- didn't misspeak, $11,000 worth of options and that includes the cabin comfort package that's gonna get you those heated seats, the Meridian Surround Sound
System, a variety of upgrades including the around view camera system and that's gonna bring you to an as tested price of 111,120 bucks.
Now that's a lot of money.
Definitely can't afford one of these.
But I'm gonna steal one when civilization falls.
