The Aristocratic But Rugged 2005 Range Rover HSE

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Twice I’ve seen the Queen of England driving. The first was in some grainy WWII footage, and the uniformed Elizabeth, then a pretty princess, was whipping past home-front hedgerows in what was probably a lend-lease Dodge Power Wagon.


The second shot was taken more than two generations later. The Queen, her royal visage framed by a headscarf, was doggedly making tracks down a muddy estate road in a Range Rover.


Of course, that Range Rover was not the 2005 model reviewed here. Her Majesty’s venerable English 4×4 appeared to date from the late 1980s, which, incidentally, was around the time that Land Rover began shipping some of the British aristocracy’s favorite luxury sport-utes over here.


This accounts for why any horse-owning gentry you know likely also runs a Range Rover. To do otherwise – and drive, say, a competing Lexus LX 470 or Mercedes M-Class – would be to fly in the face of demographic demands for demonstrable Anglophilia.


Not that Range Rovers are all that High Church anymore. Continuing a 2004 model year redesign, the 2005 represents a truck that BMW developed prior to selling Land Rover to Ford in 2000.The (base-price) $72,000 sport-ute is still built in England however, and is fitted with a modified version of the 4.4-liter V8 found in the BMW X5.


It uses this in concert with a 5-speed automatic transmission equipped with overdrive and a manual shift gate. In addition to the truck’s four-wheel drive system (which can kick into low range gearing on the fly),there’s a rich array of standard features, including an antiskid system, traction control, ABS, a hill descent governor, and a height adjustable suspension.


The Queen’s Range Rover was upright and rectilinear – a British racing green inheritor of the utilitarian purposes that shaped Land Rovers in the far thest-flung corners of empire. The test truck looked like the same thing subjected to an industrial-design makeover. Now in a smartly abstracted form suited to contemporary country life, the tester’s “Zambezi Silver” paint job simultaneously acknowledged its newly machined appearance and rich colonial heritage.


The test truck was a $79,000 HSE equipped with 19-inch wheels, a GPS satellite navigation system, and an optional luxury package that included 16-way adjustable contoured front seats, heated front and rear seats, and an inte grated ski bag. Inside, a comfortable cabin fairly startled us in its use of premium wood and leather.


The functionality of the linear-looking dash and console was impeded only by their many buttons (covering such functions as the Bluetooth-enabled telephone system and a heated steering wheel), which faced us with hieroglyphs as undecipherable as those found at Roswell’s crash site. The touch screen radio offered two options: either diligently study it before getting underway or meander into opposing traffic while trying to figure out how to home in on that cool college station that sometimes plays the klezmer version of “People are Strange.” Once Range Rover’s sole trim level, HSEs must now endure the inferior class status imposed by the recent appearance of a limited edition Westminster LE model trimmed in ebony and painted Pearle scent black.


The Range Rover’s driver and passengers sit regally in the SUV, its seemingly elongated hood visiting each locale well before them. Despite this stateliness, the four-by-four accelerates smartly, achieving 60 in close to 60 seconds, according to the manufacturer’s claim. At any rate, the Range Rover shifts with elegant smoothness while its taut air suspension offers silken passage over most surfaces.


Further, belying the truck’s aristocratic pretensions are its off-road abilities, which allow it to clamber over rough terrain in a way any sportsman would appreciate; on road, the Range Rover is unassailably refined and car like. Physical law dictates that the Range Rover exhibits some corner lean, rough-surface jitters, and susceptibility to highway wind noise. Otherwise, it’s like a utilitarian luxury sedan that’s at home in the highlands.


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