First Drive: Range Rover 350 HSE 2022 Review

Entirely new Range Rovers are a rare thing, averaging just one a decade in the 50-ish years since the original broke cover and, for better or worse, began the process of filling the roads with SUVs. Each generation so far has been a clean break from its immediate forebear in both engineering and looks, albeit with several iconic design cues being carried over. This latest L460 generation however is more evolutionary than revolutionary in its appearance, but what about the oily bits underneath? We took the just superseded L405 model for a back-to-back comparison on British roads. Is the new car, which will cost on average £20k more like-for-like, really that much better than the old one?

As mentioned, the L460 is not the radical styling departure that we have become used to with each new Range Rover. At first glance the changes are iterative, a comprehensive nip and tuck rather than a clean sheet restyle, but look further and the wholesale changes make themselves apparent. The signature Range Rover styling elements are still present: clamshell bonnet, floating roof and split tailgate with raised lettering, but park new and old side-by-side and no one will be mistaking which is the more modern, sharper product.

The new Range Rover is more elegant and muscular too with a strong shoulder that runs from the bonnet all the way to the rear of the car with the glasshouse tucked inside it. A lack of window finishers not only makes for a sharper transition between body and glass but, along with flush door handles, improves both aero and wind noise; the car has a drag coefficient of just 0.30Cd, impressive for something so large and bluff. The various flourishes such as the multi-faceted grille, the side panels which mimic the vents on previous models and the small metal finishing strips on the rear wings to break up the expanse of metal and help to accentuate the ‘hewn from solid’ appearance Land Rover’s design team led by Gerry McGovern was going for. That said the dark upright lozenges which hide the rear lights leave the rear looking somewhat plain and overly wide thanks to the horizontal black bar joining them.

A 2,505kg SUV is never going to move off the line with genuine alacrity, even with 350PS (257kW) and 700Nm (516lb ft) of torque from the twin-turbocharged Ingenium straight-six diesel, not helped by the expected slow response from the ubiquitous ZF eight-speed automatic. The gearbox also displays its typical confusion in stop-start traffic, occasionally thumping between ratios as you come on and off the throttle. Once you’re on the move however, the Range Rover picks up pace from around town to motorway speeds smoothly and effortlessly quickly. It lacks the surprising low-key savagery of the same engine in the previous generation car but does a much better job of disguising the inherent diesel gruffness.

Sepulchral quiet and comfort is the order of the day; reducing Noise, Vibration and Harshness (NVH) was a key engineering focus when creating the L460, even extending to an active noise cancelling system using speakers mounted in the headrests. Our car lacked these but by every measure it significantly bests the previous model. This is thanks mostly to the significant attention paid to isolating road noise literally from the ground up and preventing it from resonating through the floor of the car.

The same applies to the suspension; the L405 rides better than anything this side of a Rolls-Royce but larger bumps can still cause the structure to shudder. Not so the new car; you will be aware that the suspension is working hard but it is well isolated from the cabin. The pitching and rolling that are, by and large, simply down to the physics of accelerating, braking and turning in a large, heavy and upright car are much reduced, although not entirely absent. Even on 22-inch wheels the ride is comparable to the Rolls-Royce Black Badge we drove a couple of weeks ago. 

The steering is noticeably improved from the L405, there is no longer any slack around dead centre and overall, the system is more faithful and precise. Big wheels, big weight and a lot of assistance means little in the way of feedback but you can feel confident in knowing exactly how the car will respond, making it easy to hold a tight line on narrow roads which the Range Rover is easily capable of filling. The brakes are also deserving of a special mention, striking perfect balance between the power to rein in a 2.5-tonne car and the smooth modulation required to make chauffeur-style stops.

And then there’s the fact that Land Rover has, remarkably, managed to move the on-road manners so far forward without compromising the car’s ability when you leave the tarmac.  Automatic terrain response is carried over from the previous model, along with a triple camera system to show the driver the terrain in front of the car and where each front wheel is. At Land Rover’s off-road testing and experience centre at Eastnor Castle, we tackled slopes steep enough to make the ground disappear beneath the bonnet and mud thick enough to make even a Labrador give it a wide berth with an ease that made me check the team hadn’t sneakily swapped the car onto all-terrain tyres while we had coffee.

The days of Range Rovers with hose-out interiors are decades in the past, the car has been a byword for one of the best cabins in which to spend an extended journey ever since the company started adding wood and leather. Today, Range Rover’s aim as a brand is to exemplify ‘Modern Luxury’ through a combination of technology, capability and sybaritic comfort. So, the seats on the L460 are possibly the most comfortable in any car with a pillowy softness that you sink into, while every touch surface is wrapped in smooth, beautifully stitched leather thanks to an SVO Bespoke upgrade.

The instrument screen in front of the driver is semi-floating, tucked into the dashboard along its top edge. This approach is less visually successful than say the fully surround-less approach taken by Porsche in the Taycan but, along with the floating central touchscreen, creates a greater feeling of space for the front occupants. The rear passengers are also well catered for with plenty of head, leg and shoulder room, although the electric recline on the seats was rather abrupt in its adjustment. An extended wheelbase version is available as on the previous generation as well as a third row of seats for the first time. One oddity in the rear of the cabin is the surprisingly small window openings, something the Range Rover shares with the Defender 110, although having trick window switches able to control both sides as well as adjust the overhead sunshade is a clever touch.

It is odd, however, that some of the seat adjustment has been moved to the touchscreen; I wasn’t the only tester surprised at the lack of a physical button to adjust the lumbar support. And having made huge improvements to the precision of the steering, it is a real shame that Land Rover has done away with the delightful, Rolls-Royce-esque thin rim on the wheel. The tiller however is a much improved, less complicated design than that on the previous model with physical as well as touch-sensitive controls.

The biggest improvement an owner will notice day-to-day is that this is the first Land Rover product to benefit from four-wheel steering. This genuinely requires some mental recalibration as you turn hard out of a driveway and the car seems almost to pivot 90-degrees around the rear wheels. Off-road, the all-wheel steering really shone, allowing the Range Rover to tackle an off-road, uphill hairpin in one manoeuvre whereas the Defender lead car needed to back up and take it in two.

Land Rover claims to have taken out 125 patents for this car and it does have some features over and above the expected safety, convenience and driver aids. One of which is a sophisticated cabin air filtration system with its own dedicated tile on the central display that shows you the difference between the air outside and inside the car in terms of parts-per-million of particulate matter.

The 13.1-inch touchscreen is the heart of the Range Rover’s infotainment and the Pivo Pro system it runs is among one of the best. It’s smooth, lag-free and responsive, with an attractive user interface that mimics what most of us are used to with our smartphones. Land Rover claims any function is just two clicks away; the haptic interface requires a firm press that is indeed rewarded with a click. Thankfully, there are separate rotary dials for the climate controls some functions like the aforementioned seat adjustment and the ride height have been hidden inside menus when buttons would have been preferable. New for this model is a sophisticated Alexa integration although we didn’t have time to test it.

The Range Rover is one of those unique products in the automotive world which remains unrivalled. Despite growing competition for its position as a super-luxury SUV that can do double duty as a limousine, nothing really comes close to capturing the Range Rover’s unique blend of abilities and the way it makes you feel piloting one down the road, even cars with triple its increasingly hefty price tag.

If you need a car that you absolutely know can get you to where you need to be in ease and comfort, regardless of weather conditions or surface to be traversed, then it has to be a Range Rover, and the new car is decisively better than the one it replaces. We do have one caveat, however; the plug-in hybrid models we will see at the end of the year with a smoother petrol V6 and a 70-mile battery-only range are probably going to be even better.