2005 Land Rover LR3 Test Drive

Land Rover's New Heavyweight

Is its blue-blood pedigree enough to compensate for poor fuel economy and weak acceleration?

purchases are made impulsively.

The balding guy in the Corvette may be a cliché, but there's an underlying truth to sports car purchases being at least casually associated with expendable cash and a lust for fading youth.

But Land Rover, which is owned by Ford Motor, if anything has a reputation for making owners feel older, wiser, sage -- and perhaps patrician. You could certainly be the latter -- and be youthful as well -- but that's not the association most Americans make when they think of the ruling class.

If you're the typical American Land Rover buyer, you're very likely already quite grown up, sure about your place in the world, well off and attracted to things that are slightly out of the mainstream. You also, apparently, see some appeal in a vehicle that has nearly one foot of ground clearance and can get you through not only every blizzard, but also every bridge-out-don't-go-this-way-on-peril-of-death natural disaster that might be thrown at your suburban nook or Rockies/New England country estate.

That's fine; there are indeed times when having a vehicle that is as extraordinarily sure-footed as a cat with all 20 claws deployed is most reassuring. At such moments, having the new 2005 Land Rover LR3, the replacement for the aged Discovery, is ideal. After all, it's positively bursting with every conceivable off-road amenity mankind has imagined. Not only do you get full-time four-wheel drive, but also a limited-slip center and rear differential, ABS brake controls that also aid traction and hill descending, and dual high and low ranges -- the lowest of which will enable an LR3 to crawl downhill at less than one mile per hour (you probably can't walk that slowly on level ground).

It's quite possible you won't need all of these four-wheelin' goodies for most of your daily driving. Even so, LR3 owners will benefit from some of the attributes that have always been Land Rover hallmarks. There's a very tall ride height with a proportionally taller greenhouse than is found on most sport utility vehicles (SUVs). This not only lets you see farther down the road, but also lets you spot dangerous creatures that might pose a threat to your LR3 as you navigate the mighty predators of your world -- ike shopping carts and all of those toys your kids leave in the driveway.

The other tertiary perk of the LR3's off-road pedigree is a very tight turning radius -- a few feet smaller than that of the Volvo XC90 (Volvo is also owned by Ford) and of the Volkswagen Touareg. This small turning radius makes the LR3 one of the most maneuverable SUVs we've ever driven; you can dance this truck around detritus in the garage and coax it over boulders with great precision.

Note that we didn't call the LR3 "agile," but maneuverable; there's a difference, which makes comparing this vehicle with the likes of the aforementioned Volvo and VW particularly apt. If you get the idea that being (or seeming) patrician may not be enough to sell this latest jewel from Ford's Premium Automotive Group, you're sniffing in the right direction. Perhaps.