2005 Land Rover Range Rover Test Drive

The King of SUVs

Interior

Before we get inside the car, you have to know why the interior of Range Rover is as quiet as that of an S-Class Mercedes.

See, interiors that excel do so because they are plugged into cars that are already great, which means cars with very stiff frames and excellent suspensions.

The entirely new Range Rover gets all this thanks to its long development cycle and an alliance with BMW. Six years ago BMW owned Rover, and that's when the redesign was first hatched. And even though Ford now owns Land Rover, the BMW partnership brought Range Rover not only the superb 7 Series engine (that Land Rover gets to use for as long as it wants to), but also its famous engineering and manufacturing know-how. For example, although the body-on-frame design of the original Range Rover has been scrapped in favor of a unibody, this new chassis is 250% stiffer than the old truck — the chassis is so strong, you could hang a Range Rover from its front bumper and still hang another one off the rear bumper without the first car's frame bending.

All that's just to give you an idea that they didn't have to stuff this truck with pillows to make it quiet — it started that way. And over hill, dale and mud pit the cabin never rattled once — save the time a bottle of water poked through the keyhole-shaped passenger cup-holder and fell on the floor. We expect Range Rover is retooling that single interior flaw as we speak.

Otherwise we were quite impressed with every surface, switch and dial. Speaking of which, the cockpit controls are laid out with eminent logic. All the buttons and knobs are a bit large, so you can both see them and grip them easily, as is anything you might want to adjust at night — even the air vent dials glow, so you can use them without turning on a map light. As if that wasn't good enough, there is soft white cabin lighting at night that shines down discreetly, so you can find your drink in your cup-holder, your lipstick in your purse or read your watch, all without touching a single switch.

All the chromed metallic trim in the car is actually made of metal, and all the soft-finished metallic trim is actually made of plastic, though every time you touch it you'd swear it's really metal. In some cars that bit of deception might be annoying — especially in cars where the "metal" trim is clearly a weak imitation of the real thing. But the execution is of such high quality in the Range Rover (that goes for everything else as well) you can't help but glory in the sleight of hand.

As for the seating, both fore and aft passengers will find extreme comfort. The front seats not only tilt, raise and lower, and slide forward and back, but the shoulder portion of the seats can also be tilted forward or backward. Even the backseats have adjustable uprights, and shoulder room is comparable to a Cadillac Deville. Aft legroom is a few inches shy of what you'll find in that Caddy, or an S-Class, but it's hardly tight. Storage capacity behind those back benches isn't great, though, with only about 19 cubic feet (assuming you don't want to block the rearview). You can cram more back there if you don't mind not seeing what's behind you, and if you flip the backseats forward you get a large hold, though not a massive one. It's closer to what you get in the back of a BMW X5 than what you'll find in a Ford Explorer — but still big enough to comfortably hold a weekend's worth of luggage, several cases of wine, a brace of dead pheasants or a pair of barking dogs.