News & Reviews- Make: Land Rover

Those that regularly read my scribblings will know I've been requesting JLR to empower its enviable lineup of sport-luxury cars and SUVs with diesel propulsion for almost as long as I've been reviewing them, and yes that time has finally arrived. Meet the 2016 Range Rover Sport HSE Td6, mostly the same SUV as last year, albeit infused with a much more efficient new heart.

I realize that I'm probably not speaking to the Range Rover Sport V8 Supercharged or SVR owner already enjoying zero to 100km/h times of 5.3 and 4.7 seconds respectively, unless they feel a newfound calling to delve deeper into the wild green yonder and therefore require much-improved fuel economy to do so. While such thriftiness has its merits off-road, most will appreciate the Sport Td6's impressive 10.6 L/100km city, 8.1 highway and 9.4 combined five-cycle rating even more while attending to their regular daily duties, while its 7.6-second sprint to 100km/h is hardly lacking.

This is a 32-percent Read Full Story

If you haven't heard, Disco is back in a big way. I wouldn't blame you if you didn't know. Pop music was in a funk for years, and not the kind of funk most of us enjoy, but now there's a new soulful sound that's spinning ultimately contagious dance grooves from yesteryear. The first of such tracks that lured me back was Daft Punk and Pharrell Williams' Get Lucky, followed by plenty of others including Maroon 5's Sugar, Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson's Uptown Funk, and more recently Justin Timberlake's Can't Stop the Feeling, while the new soul mentioned a moment ago, from Drake, The Weeknd, Alessia Cara, Nick Jonas, Sam Smith, et al is mellowing out the moodier moments.

These old meets new musical genres, tracks, songsters and songstresses sound fabulous on the new Disco's standard 10-speaker audio system incidentally, Disco being the catchy nickname fans and owners gave the now classic 1989 through 1998 Land Rover Discovery, plus the Discovery II, 3 and 4 sold in Europe and other Read Full Story

When the Range Rover Evoque originally wowed Detroit auto show-goers as the Land Rover LRX Concept in January of 2008, nothing else existed in the truly compact premium crossover segment. Certainly BMW had its X3 whereas Audi and Mercedes-Benz had just started producing their Q5 and GLK respectively, but these were near mid-size models in comparison to the diminutive CUV that would soon become Evoque.

The production Evoque hit the road in 2011 as a 2012 model and I could hardly wait to get my hands on it, my first weeklong test being in a three-door coupe version. Looking long, low and sleek despite its abbreviated dimensions, its measurements being 4,371 mm (172.1 inches) long, 1,985 mm (78.1 inches) wide (with the mirrors folded), and 1,605 mm (63.2 inches) tall while riding on a 2,660-mm (104.7-inch) wheelbase, it was the hot hatch of premium SUVs, a beautiful bit of Brit kit that turned heads quicker than anything else in the LR or RR lineup, let alone any of its competitors. Read Full Story

The folks at BMW must be kicking themselves right now. Way back in 1995 when then BMW CEO Bernd Pischetsrieder was named "Man of the Year" by Automobile Industries because of the $1.3-billion deal he struck to acquire Rover Group a year earlier, netting the Munich-based company a variety of British brands including Mini, Rolls-Royce and Land Rover/Range Rover, they purposely let the jewel of the bunch slip out of their hands in the spring of 2000 when they sold the SUV-maker to Ford, although the sale price of 3bn euros looked pretty good at the time. Now, with Ford out of the picture and Indian automaker Tata at the helm, Land Rover and its even more upscale Range Rover marque are doing very well.

Interestingly, BMW's highly successful X5 was the inspiration for the original Range Rover Sport back in 2005 (no doubt the success of M-B's AMG-trimmed M-Class and Porsche's Cayenne helped Land Rover see the potential of a sportier Range Rover too), and while that first-generation Read Full Story

The LR4 is the oldest model in Land Rover's lineup, even predating its current name. Prior to being dubbed LR4 it wore the LR3 nameplate, and while the move up in numerals occurred simultaneously with the 2010 model refresh, anyone familiar with the SUV understood that the revised version was merely an LR3 under subtly restyled bodywork.

That classic two-box design arrived on the scene in 2004 as a 2005 model, and immediately won the hearts and wallets of true 4x4 purists along with well-heeled soccer moms. It replaced a ute that had enjoyed a very long and rewarding tenure, the Discovery II that ran from 1998 through 2004, itself only a mild makeover of the original Discovery that entered production in 1989.

To be totally fair, while the LR4 might first have appeared like a subtle refresh as I inferred a moment ago, I for one would choose it over an LR3 any day of the week. While its design details were more appealing, notably its revised grille and side engine vents Read Full Story