The 2013 Range Rover is just wrong on a number of levels, so this dutiful scribe must go further than even Jeremy Clarkson dared tread as to what’s gone so horribly wrong at Tata’s Land Rover division. Yes, they got it they wrong… HMS Hood type bloody wrong!
Now, we had a few premonitions about this massive automotive cock up on the horizon. First, the new Indian owners of Land Rover oversaw a makeover of the previous model Rangie, and it was bad. All of the improvements Ford made to the BMW designed L322 series Range Rover (mainly chucking the crap Bimmer engines and electrics) without ruining the handsome design were gone come 2010. Superfluous ling and bleeding edge (read just going to break: they do build them in the Midlands) in car tech were the name of the game, despite a 40 year history of understated elegance. Why does a Range Rover need an flat screen in place of real instruments? This isn’t a Japanese supercar with a rev happy engine; the RR is in actuality nothing more than a posh a farm implement. Yet, the L322 was never all that good at the rough stuff, as BMW did make a real mess of things like the ABS sensor mounting and all sorts of rather daft overengineering, but it did look the part.
Just as the LR design team vommed a load of chrome and the contents of a Sony store onto the flagship, they then tarted up the Freelander (LR2) for David Beckham’s ‘lovely’ wife. That car is called a Range Rover Evoque, and it’s shit. They did carry over the improvements to the roomier Freelander/LR2, so buy one of those if you must. Clearly, we were all hoping the real deal, new for 2013 Range Rover would be something not designed to the tastes of Ratan Tata, Posh Spice, nouveau riche Russians, and the Persian population of West LA. No, not even close. They did this crap to the tail lights to offset the fake gills in the front doors!
Design aside – and, it is just awful – this new 2013 Range Rover has gone all green. Not the colour; no, they’re down to one shade. Apparently, the people who make them even know old ones of this generation won’t be around to have the dinge of algae and moss growing upon a 20+ year-old example on the drive, so finding a properly green one to develop a nice patina is out of the question. No, they made it lighter and more eco-friendly. This 2013 Range Rover has all sorts of safety equipment, and is kinder and more gentle to other cars in a crash. Why? What Range Rover driver ever wanted that asinine sort of feature? Do you put your children in something that won’t kill the sub-genius in an iQ or Smart who turns abruptly in front of you? No! You want them in the automotive equivalent of a Challenger II tank.
You see, physics dictate that they’ll only be very badly maimed instead of killed instantly by this new RR, so you’ll be on the hook for their ongoing life-care as a human vegetable. Who wants that? I don’t want to be either party to that faustian bargain: no f-ing way! What they’ve done is built a Battlecruiser to replace a Super-dreadnought. Remind me how well the HMS Hood faired against the Bizmarck or Beatty did during the opening salvo at Jutland? Right, they lost, and lost badly. So, no thank you, Land Rover. I don’t want to buy this Hoodian excuse for a Range Rover, and I’m sure your core markets of rural Oxfordshire and the natives residing in the RBKC won’t either. Hell, you might have even lost Connecticut too with this turd. So, enjoy selling them to China and the like, for now.
