Range Rover long-term test: report 3

For many people, the Range Rover is the ultimate luxury SUV. But what's it actually like to live with? We're finding out...

Darren Moss

Published02 May 2023

The car Range Rover 3.0 D350 HSE Run by Darren Moss, deputy editor

Why it’s here To see whether Land Rover’s flagship model feels as special as it should during everyday use

Needs to Offer the comfort, refinement and general wow factor that you'd expect from a £100k+ luxury SUV

Mileage 4127 List price £113,120 Target Price £113,120 Price as tested £122,770 Test economy 30.6mpg Official economy 35.7mpg

14 April 2023 – The cross-country luxury SUV

My Range Rover has been really racking up the miles this month, not least because I lent it to colleague Will Nightingale for an Easter family holiday in the south of France.

His trip to the Dordogne added 1400 miles to the odometer. The majority of those miles were on 130km/h (81mph) French autoroutes, so I don’t think his average of 30.6mpg for the trip was too terrible. Especially given that he had bums on four of the five seats and a boot packed to the gunwales with luggage – and the Range Rover is hardly a light (or aerodynamic) car to begin with.

Will noted that on slower (110km/h) sections of autoroute, the trip computer was often showing around 36mpg. That’s more in line with what I’ve been seeing on long motorway journeys back in the UK.

Aside from the obvious praise we’ve lavished on the latest Range Rover since its launch last year (its peerless driving position, comfy ride and smooth diesel engine), Will was also impressed by a couple of lesser-known features that I haven’t really tried out yet.

The first was the ClearSight rear-view mirror. This comes as standard with HSE trim, and means you can switch from a conventional mirror (in other words, one that shows a reflection of what’s behind) to a rear camera feed at the flick of a switch. This was really handy because, with the boot fully loaded and the rear headrests up, the view out the rear screen was practically non-existent.

The second feature was the air quality meter. This is accessed through the infotainment touchscreen and shows you the level of particulate pollution both outside the car and inside. Most of the time in rural France the level was judged to be very low outside as well as in, but through towns and around major cities, there was a big difference between the pollution outside and in, showing that the air filtration system was doing its job.

The contrast was particularly big in the Eurotunnel, where the Range Rover judged the level of air particulates (mostly diesel fumes) in the train carriage to be hazardously high. With a two-year-old and four-year-old on board, he decided to ignore Eurotunnel’s advice of leaving a window open and everyone inside the car enjoyed a much lower level of pollution.