THE SHIFT Stories from Car Culture
The Other Car
The Range Rover was never supposed
to become an icon of luxury.
Perhaps that is precisely why it did.
By Peter George
Head of Sound & Motion, KINGSHIFT TV
Look to the side
Walk into the garage of a serious car collector and your eyes naturally go towards the obvious things.
The Ferrari under its cover.
The air-cooled Porsche.
The old Aston Martin.
Perhaps something Italian, temperamental and impossibly beautiful sitting on a battery conditioner, waiting for exactly the right Sunday morning.
These are the cars we talk about.
But look slightly to the side.
There is often something else sitting there.
A Range Rover.
The Car that Gets Used
It might be the latest generation, beautifully specified but already carrying the evidence of yesterday’s journey.
It might be a previous-generation car that has quietly accumulated 150,000 kilometres.
Or increasingly, it might be a Range Rover Classic whose owner now considers it every bit as special as the sports cars parked beside it.
Because somewhere during the last half-century, the Range Rover achieved something rather unusual.
It became the everyday car of people who could drive almost anything.
And perhaps even more remarkably, after more than fifty years, we still want the new one just as much as we want the old one.
Before the Luxury SUV Existed
When the original Range Rover appeared in 1970, the idea was beautifully straightforward.
It needed the capability of a Land Rover without demanding that its occupants accept all the compromises that came with one.
It wasn’t simply a luxury car made taller.
It was a genuine four-wheel-drive machine: permanent four-wheel drive, long-travel suspension, a commanding driving position and an interior conceived around practicality. And yet the shape was extraordinary.
The horizontal bonnet.
The enormous glass area.
The thin pillars.
The floating roof.
The split tailgate.
There is a purity to an early two-door Range Rover that designers have spent decades trying to rediscover.
It was industrial design rather than automotive jewellery.
Somehow, it became jewellery anyway.
Range Rover I, 1970
The Country Became the City
The Range Rover belonged on an estate.
It could tow, cross a field and disappear down a muddy track carrying dogs, boots, tools and whatever else the weekend required.
But it could also arrive somewhere important.
That distinction matters.
The Range Rover never needed to abandon the countryside to become luxurious.
Instead, luxury gradually grew around its original capability.
The carpets became thicker. The leather became better. Four doors arrived. Automatic transmissions, increasingly powerful engines and increasingly sophisticated interiors followed.
Eventually, an entire category of automobile emerged around the territory the Range Rover had occupied almost by itself.
Today, virtually every serious premium manufacturer wants a luxury SUV.
Yet the Range Rover doesn’t quite feel like another entrant in the segment.
It feels like the reason the segment exists.
From Balmoral to Beverly Hills
Few cars have crossed cultural boundaries quite like it.
The British Royal Family became closely associated with Range Rovers, often photographed not merely being driven in them, but driving them themselves.
Then the same silhouette started appearing everywhere.
On country estates and outside five-star hotels.
In Knightsbridge and Hollywood.
In the Alps, Monaco and Beverly Hills.
At equestrian events and film premieres.
Actors drove them. Musicians drove them. Racing drivers drove them. Business leaders drove them.
Old money drove them.
New money drove them.
The Range Rover somehow crossed social tribes without losing its identity.
It could be aristocratic without being delicate.
Expensive without originally being ostentatious.
Fashionable without having been created by fashion.
And adventurous without constantly needing to tell everyone it was adventurous.
Range Rover V, 2021
The Collector’s Daily
Which brings us back to that garage.
There is a peculiar truth amongst enthusiasts.
The more extreme the cars become, the more useful the other car needs to be.
A Countach does not particularly enjoy airport runs.
An F40 isn’t where you want four people and their luggage.
And a beautifully restored 911 is not necessarily the car you choose when the weather has turned biblical and you still have three hundred kilometres to travel.
So the collector reaches for another set of keys.
Very often, they have a Range Rover badge attached to them.
But calling it the daily almost does it a disservice.
Because we become genuinely attached to them.
The supercar provides the occasion.
The Range Rover becomes part of life.
Part of life
It carries children.
Dogs. Friends. Luggage.
Camera equipment. Golf clubs. Skis. Shopping.
Parts for the other cars.
It goes to the airport at five in the morning.
It crosses Europe.
It sits outside meetings.
It gets dirty.
It gets scratched.
And then, washed and polished, it can pull up outside one of the finest hotels in the world and somehow look completely appropriate.
Few automobiles possess that breadth of character.
One of the many personalities of a Range Rover
Then We Started Collecting Them
Perhaps the ultimate proof of the Range Rover’s significance is what eventually happened to the originals.
We began restoring them.
The vehicle that spent decades hauling trailers and crossing muddy fields started entering specialist workshops and receiving the kind of attention once reserved for Jaguars, Ferraris and Aston Martins.
Early two-door cars became genuinely desirable.
Original colours mattered.
Correct interiors mattered.
Steel wheels became beautiful.
The simplicity that once made an old Range Rover appear outdated became precisely what made it attractive.
There is something wonderfully ironic about that.
The luxury SUV became so successful that eventually we became nostalgic for the time before it was particularly luxurious.
Yet We Still Want the New One
And this may be the most unusual part of the Range Rover story.
Normally, when an automobile becomes a true classic, enthusiasts begin telling us the old one was better.
More analogue.
More authentic.
More beautiful.
More pure.
Put a beautifully restored early Range Rover beside the latest generation, however, and something curious happens.
We want both.
The old car represents simplicity, adventure and an increasingly romantic idea of British utility.
The new one represents extraordinary refinement, technology, silence and effortless performance.
Yet somehow they recognise each other.
The floating roof remains.
The uninterrupted waistline remains.
The commanding driving position remains.
The visual simplicity remains.
A new Range Rover doesn’t need to imitate the old one to remind you of it.
Luxury Without Fragility
Perhaps that explains why the Range Rover has endured.
The greatest luxury objects aren’t necessarily those that demand the most care.
Sometimes true luxury is precisely the opposite.
It’s knowing you can go almost anywhere.
That the weather doesn’t matter.
That there’s space for everyone.
That after six hours behind the wheel you can arrive without feeling as though you’ve travelled for six hours.
There are faster cars.
There are more expensive cars.
There are more dramatic cars.
But very few can accompany as many different parts of a life.
Monday Morning
We dream about the Ferrari.
We wait for the perfect morning to take out the classic Porsche.
We occasionally find an excuse to start the V12 simply because we haven’t heard it for a few days.
But when Monday morning arrives, the rain is falling, there are four people to collect, luggage to carry and somewhere three hundred kilometres away that we need to be…
We reach for the Range Rover keys.
And somehow, that never feels like second bst.
The Other Car
More than half a century after the first one appeared, perhaps the Range Rover’s greatest achievement isn’t that it helped create the luxury SUV.
It’s that it remains something much harder to define.
Part luxury car.
Part working vehicle.
Part design icon.
Part British institution.
Part family member.
The old one makes us stop and look.
The new one still makes us want one.
And whether it is crossing an estate, climbing a mountain road, sitting outside a grand hotel or simply waiting beside a collection of far more exotic machinery, the Range Rover seems completely at home.
The quintessential adventure luxury automobile.
