Range Rover review

The Range Rover is an expensive car, and it’s possible to make it much more expensive after just a brief flirtation with the options list. It won’t be a cheap car to run or pay tax on, either, but the P400e is by far the most affordable for a company car user to run: it officially produces as little as 75g/km of CO2 (for context, the next closest in the range is the D300 diesel at 225g/km).

Even if you don't go mad on options, private buyers will still lose out quite heavily with depreciation, bearing in mind that even the more popular models will, on average, lose not far off 60% of their list price after three years. Both the BMW X7 and Porsche Cayenne are predicted to hold on to more of their value. 

Entry-level Vogue trim has plenty of kit, but we'd recommend jumping up a step to Vogue SE. This includes three-zone climate control, keyless entry, 21in alloy wheels, heated and cooled front seats, interior ambient lighting, soft-closing doors, a hands-free activated powered tailgate, and, as we've mentioned, it beefs up the standard safety kit and gives you a better stereo. Westminster models mainly give you styling trinkets we wouldn’t bother with, while Autobiography trim adds even more toys, including a rear-seat entertainment system on long-wheelbase models, but it's pretty pricey.

At the top of the tree is the SVAutobiography, which gets virtually every toy and gadget that Land Rover has in its armoury. The price is eye watering, though.

If you want more details on what each trim gets, have a look at our versions and specs page.

Despite the rugged reputation of the brand, Land Rover's don’t actually have a stellar reputation for reliability. The 2019 What Car? Reliability Survey backs this up; the brand finished in an awful 31st overall – dead last. The Range Rover also came third from last in its class – hardly a confidence-inspiring performance.

Land Rover provides a three-year/unlimited mileage warranty on every car it sells in the UK, which is a match for BMW and Mercedes and beats the 60,000-mile cap imposed by Audi. You also get Europe-wide breakdown cover for the duration of the warranty.

When it was new in 2012 the Range Rover received a maximum five-star safety rating from Euro NCAP, although even then its performance in collisions with pedestrians was not impressive. More to the point, that test was so long ago – and things have moved on so much since – that the five-star rating is now no longer valid, so you can only ignore it.

Still, all Range Rovers have sophisticated electronic systems to keep you on the straight and narrow, and that applies whether you’re on an A-road or venturing into the wilderness. You get automatic emergency braking (AEB) and a lane-departure warning system as standard on Vogue trim, while Vogue SE adds blind spot monitoring. Lane-keeping assistance and AEB that works at higher speeds is standard on Autobiography and up.

The car's anti-theft technology is state of the art, too, prompting Thatcham Research to award the car the maximum five stars for resisting being stolen and four out of five for resisting being broken into.

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