New Rover: Big, Dreamy, and a Sticker Price to Match

It’s a big SUV, which helps a lot, and that “big-ness” translates to a dreamy ride.  Taking long road trips on the interstate is where this big SUV is at its best, but it’s also really good in town.  Thank the advanced adjustable air suspension.”

In 1994 BMW purchased the Land Rover and Range Rover business from the Rover group of England, and immediately got to work to make the Range Rover into a world class SUV.  It took a while, but the L322 generation Range Rover, which launched in 2001, is still considered to be one of the best Range Rovers ever (the late Queen Elizabeth of England famously refused to give up her L322 and kept it until her passing in 2022).

I think that coupling a beautiful modern Range Rover with a BMW engine and transmission, as they did in this case, was a very good thing.  However, BMW got tired of spending copious amounts of money on their Land Rover and Range Rover project so they sold the whole lot—as the Brits might say—to Ford in 2000.

An anonymous Ford executive famously informed a journalist that Ford, which also owned Jaguar at the time, was dying to swap the BMW engines and transmissions for Jaguar drivetrains because, “each BMW engine we put in these things costs us more than a new Mustang”. 

In 2006, Jaguar engines and transmissions became standard equipment on L322 Range Rovers, and that arrangement continued under the new owners of Jaguar Land Rover, the Tata group out of India.

I know this story is dragging on, but we’ve now arrived (finally) at the current Range Rover, the fifth generation L460 version, which was introduced in 2022 as a 2023 model, and this one has reverted back to BMW as its engine and transmission supplier. We’ve come full circle.

After that long intro I’ll give you the skinny then follow with deets: the L460 Range Rover has a modern design best described as reductive, is more luxurious than it was, and costs a lot more than it used to.

The exterior design is beautiful.  I could be more nuanced, but there’s no need.  The Range Rover design team took the last Range Rover and subtracted design elements—bodywork folds and creases, chrome accents, what have you—until they had a completely minimalist final product.  Few bodywork embellishments of any kind were preserved, even the taillights are hidden, and it looks fabulous. 

The same goes for the interior.  Everything you see and touch looks and feels premium.  If it looks like leather it’s leather, and if it looks like metal it’s metal.

The Range Rover is available with a quartet of BMW-sourced powertrains, starting with a turbocharged inline-six with a 48-volt mild hybrid system dubbed P400 that develops 395HP.  A 523HP twin-turbo 4.4-liter V8 engine (P530) is even swifter and ups the Range Rover's towing capacity to 8200 pounds.

A 542HP plug-in-hybrid option (P550e) is also available but only on the short-wheelbase models, and the range-topping SV comes with a 606HP V8 called P615.

Range Rovers can be had with long- and short-wheel bases.  The long one, conceived for the Chinese market where many executives ride in back and like lots of rear seat leg room, looks a little off and doesn’t offer a third row of seats, so I don’t recommend it.

Driving the newest Range Rover is a pleasure.  It’s a big SUV, which helps a lot, and that “big-ness” translates to a dreamy ride.  Taking long road trips on the interstate is where this big SUV is at its best, but it’s also really good in town.  Thank the advanced adjustable air suspension.

Still, this is a big and heavy SUV, so it’s not athletic.  Twisty back roads are not in its wheelhouse, nor is parallel parking.

But I’ll say this for the L460 Range Rover: driving it makes you feel special.  You feel good in a way that you didn't in the previous generations, or in many luxury cars this side of a Bentley.  It’s selling very well, and I think that feeling of specialness explains why it’s so popular with well-heeled buyers.

Which brings me to the biggest downer of this very nice luxury vehicle—it’s expensive.  The base price is $115,750, and getting the most optioned long wheelbase Autobiography model will cost you an eye watering $248,150.

That’s a lot of money no matter what tax bracket you’re in, so take a deep breath and consider your personal financial situation before you click on, “buy it now”.

Another downer is fuel economy.  The P400 six-cylinder model gets 19MPG City/23 Highway, the P530 gets 16/23MPG, and the big daddy P615 gets, weirdly, the same 16/23MPG. 

Having said all that, if you can afford the new Range Rover, I can tell you that it’s worth it.  It’s a beautiful vehicle to behold, and every trip will make you feel special.

Stephen Schutz has covered the automotive world for more than 30 years as a syndicated writer and podcast host.  Read his column monthly in The Cricket.