Range Rover L460 review: another evolutionary step forward

With the 'old' Range Rover still seeming so modern, where could they go with this one? Time for another evolutionary step, at least at first blush. You keep looking and blinking: it's like the L405, only brighter, tidier, somehow more in-focus. The fine detail is mesmerising. Only in the tail elevation did the designers allow themselves a new flourish, with the hidden black-panel lights.

Yet its structure is pretty well all-new. They had to do that so there's room beneath for the battery in next year's all-electric version, as well as the PHEV. Also the LWB version can have seven seats, a first, after all these years, for the Range Rover.

The tech is sparklier than ever. Its curved big-screen HMI, with a satisfying haptic click, works really well. There's four-wheel steering, which makes it surprisingly easy to bring this supertanker into dock. That 4WS, with all the other anti-roll and adaptive chassis systems, use data from the navigation to prepare themselves for a bend.

So yes, it's just the same, but better. The low-speed ride is smoother, the general sense of isolation even more complete. The high-speed damping is a little better contained. This one has the homebrew straight-six Ingenium diesel, but you'd hardly guess the fuel unless you cock a keen ear.

The cabin is right there with the luxury saloons, but as with the exterior, beautifully and confidently simple in aesthetic. Which is achingly hard to carry off because if something is simple but not quite right, you soon notice. This one is pretty much just a base model: go up the food chain to the four-seat LWB versions and it all gets very individual-recliner-with-fridge.

Which probably wasn't quite what the vets, police and land agents who bought the 1970 Range Rover would have expected, or even wanted. But there you are. It started as a great vehicle that luxury-car buyers people began to treat as a luxury vehicle, first in Britain and then across the world. Here we are with 53 years of luxury having been added to suit those buyers. But the original capability hasn't been subtracted.

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