Deluxe SUV makes you want to be part of its story
A Range Rover Evoque looks like a fairly chunky machine next to the average sedan, but next to the nearly top-of-the-range Range Rover Autobiography, it has the presence of a Citi Golf. For all of its hulking presence, though, the latter does have some minimalist elements.
The centre panel between driver and passenger seats comprises three simple panels, two of which retract to reveal cupholders and a recharging socket – but only if you have an iPhone, which is not the most helpful brand connection or partnership if your Android-friendly cable doesn’t fit.
Behind the wheel, you’re seated high, a bonus when driving in Cape Town, when you can choose Chapman’s Peak or a circumnavigation of the Peninsula as a perfectly reasonable route to take between hotels or appointments. The interior layout and functionality feels extraordinarily luxurious without ever being finicky or poncey, with none of the sort of ‘look at me’ features that just require extra time to navigate, rather than being helpful. For instance, seat adjustment controls are on the door panel near the seat, which makes a kind of sense that’s more common than you can generally hope for on a vehicle as high-end as this one.
The infotainment screen is easy enough to use, mostly intuitive, though it sometimes requires an extra step to get to where you want, function-wise – particularly when you’re just becoming accustomed to the car.
Restrained authority
The response to putting your foot down is gratifyingly quick, though the silenced cabin means there is no smile-inducing roar of a muscle car. The brakes are also superb, stopping what is a huge vehicle (the Autobiography is 5m long and 2m wide) in an urgent moment without any jerkiness or uncertainty.
This all adds to this being a wonderful cruising car, with brilliant road-holding, comfort and sound system. If you’re not in a rush, you may find yourself picking the longer route to your destination or even offering lifts to friends simply so you can have some extra time in this safe, restful space.
The exterior styling is sleek but plain, eschewing the show-off curves of some of the other statement SUVs. It makes sense that this is a car the late Queen Elizabeth II so appreciated: big, powerful and able to get around anything that might get in its way … and yet discreet.
The car’s finer features are often rather low-key. The indicators, wing mirrors, even the fan slots on the dashboard – nothing is chunky or flashy or wide. Exterior door handles sink into the door handle as you lock and leave and rise out of the surface as you approach again, making it feel like the car is sad to see you go and happy to see you return, like a high-pedigree hound.
Getting under the skin
A high number of features go unused until you head offroad, including raising the already robust ground clearance even further, engaging slope control or – if you can find a reasonably big stream – seeing what happens when you test the defined ‘wading depth’, which is stated as a not insignificant 900mm.
There are also features, however, that make everyday situations much more comfortable. One example? Generally, when you come back to a car with indulgent leather seats after it’s spent some time in the sun while you were shopping or having a meal, getting in and sitting down is a recipe for sadness. Here, though, you can activate a seat cooling feature and almost immediately feel the difference (the opposite is true, too, if you need to heat the seats on a cold day).
As you spend more time behind the wheel, the control centre becomes easier to use – holding a button down might make it into a slider, for instance, meaning changing temperatures or other settings is much easier than it would be if you had to press said button a dozen times instead of merely shifting a finger. When you aren’t enjoying what’s inside the Autobiography, it’s enjoyably easy to see what’s outside of it, with an extensive camera system making figuring out where the corners of the behemoth are and getting out of tight spots surprisingly easy.
And once you’re out of anywhere where the vehicle’s power needs to be constrained, it’s very tempting to see what it can do beyond the good behaviour expected in the suburbs. If you can, safely and legally, do put your foot down: it feels as if the car somehow stands up, leaping forward toward whatever the speed limit is, G-force pushing you back into your cushioned seat. The Autobiography is a machine that epitomises civilised, sumptuous sophistication, but give it a chance and it’s happy to show just how gritty it can be.
Text and photography | Bruce Dennill
For more information, go to landrover.co.za.
