COTY “Car I’d Actually Buy” Winner — Range Rover Autobiography
The supercars may steal the limelight, but the imposing new Rangey (in 7-seat LWB P530 V8 guise) is the car that has everything—and then some.
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The problem with supercars is that they’re a bit, well, rubbish. Sure, they bring certain advantages when they enter a Car of the Year contest—they look like works of art, make the kind of noises that cause actual adults to grunt involuntarily in appreciation and provide a level of acceleration that causes endorphins to throw a party in one’s mind.
But really, other than all that, are they actually any good? Which is to say, could you live with one? They’re often not that comfortable, many of them ride like skateboards with no wheels, they’ve no room for the kids, or luggage, and taking them into a shopping centre car park is guaranteed mental anguish.
Which might be why, each year, when we ask the Robb Report COTY judges to pick the one car that they’d actually buy from the year’s fleet of stars, with their own money, they don’t tend to vote for the high-maintenance Italians but something a little more real-world liveable.
This year’s winner of that much-discussed award is definitely not a screaming supercar—which you can tell from its dimensions alone. It’s possible we could park the Porsche on top of the Ferrari and the Lamborghini on top of that and it would still be barely as tall, nor imposing, as the new Range Rover Autobiography.
The Rangey would be slightly cheaper than such an imposing tower of metal, though, at $304,700, but that’s still a large number for an SUV, which is why it’s notable that no one questioned the value in that price after driving it over two days —they just wanted one on their driveway.
The term “SUV” is not grand or expansive enough to describe the movable majesty of something like the incoming Range Rover. This thing is vast—5.2 metres long, just over two metres wide and 1.87 metres high—and heavy, at 2.72 tonnes. It’s also powered by an engine that can shrug off those numbers with its prodigious power—a 4.4-litre turbocharged V8 making 390 kW and 750 Nm.
And yet, as intimidating as all that sounds, the thing you most remember about driving the Range Rover is the serenity, the ease and the sense of luxury. Yes, it’s important to note that its Dynamic mode is properly bonkers, that it can throw you and all of your vehicle to 100 km/h in just 4.8 seconds, and that it can corner with an impressively flat attitude and fulsome steering feedback, but you probably wouldn’t drive your Autobiography like that too often.
No, what makes it delectable is the way that it makes you feel separate from the rest of the world—cocooned, cosseted, relaxed. The Range Rover Autobiography rides beautifully, it makes everything easy, it ignores bumps and chuckles knowingly at speed humps, it just feels … special.
Then there’s the cabin, which is supremely comfortable, silent and properly luxe. The seat massages are lovely, the 34-speaker Meridian sound system is a joy and the sense of space is superlative. And it’s got seven seats, so it’s a hugely practical family car. More than that, with its mixture of performance, refined cruising and the ability to perform serious off-roading miracles, it really is one car to rule them all.
Then there are the lovely tech touches, like the fact that you can hide the tow bar away, or pop it out at the touch of a button; the seat at the rear for watching polo from (you can even adjust the height of the car from the rear at the touch of a button); the air filtration system, which can show you on a screen just how much better the air really is inside your Range Rover.
And on top of all that, somehow, despite its obvious bulk, the Autobiography still manages to look fabulous, too; a truly modern take on a classic shape. Everything about it is just so right … and just so Range Rover.
If you had to take one car out of the whole amazing field for COTY, and live with it forever, this is the one. Even if you had to buy it with your own money.
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