WATCH: New Range Rover as close to motoring heaven as it gets

The late French novelist Francoise Sagan once said: “Money may not buy happiness, but I’d rather cry in a Jaguar than on a bus.”

Staying in the Jaguar-Land Rover (JLR) stable, I’ll put it to you in Barry Roux style, that new Range Rover offers an even comfier place to wipe away your tears in. In fact, if this car does not cheer you up, you were probably born terminally miserable.

Watch extraordinary new Range Rover

Before and after the highly anticipated local launch of the new Range Rover, the tireless JLR wordsmiths needed around 12 000 words spread across five press releases to describe the British moniker’s crown jewel. We are restricted to around 800 words to sing its praises.

Not helping our dilemma is the fact that we had the Range Rover in D350 First Edition guise on test. It slots in above the “entry-level” SE and HSE derivatives and just below the flagship SV, meaning it has more specifications than Buckingham Palace has tea cups.

We had plenty of time to explore these bells and whistles in little dribs and drabs while putting the Range Rover through its paces going about our weekly chores. This included school runs, driving to the office, stopping at the grocery shop and getting to the airport.

It all comes together

But it was only when The Citizen Motoring took the monstrosity to Gerotek Test Facilities for high-performance testing we got to experience most of the niceties all at once. The experience was nothing but pure bliss.

Situated just outside Atteridgeville, east of Pretoria, I reach our testing facility from Randburg on a route ranging dramatically in terms of road surface – from smooth double-lane tarmac past Lanseria Airport on the R512 to twisties and undulations past the Lion and Safari Park, and an eventual deplorable pothole-ridden R104 past Pelindaba.

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I can safely say that we have never had a more comfortable ride to Gerotek and arguably never experienced a cabin quite as isolated from engine, road or other noises.

In leaving before sunrise, we also got to experience the Range Rover’s digital headlights in their full splendour, lightning up the sides of the country road to the extent you could easily mistake it for sunlight.

The car’s simply sublime road-holding and handling is a culmination of many features, including a 48-volt mild-hybrid electronic air suspension called Dynamic Response Pro and torque that varies between axles courtesy of a system called Driveline Dynamics.

Smooth operator

While we did not dare take it off the road out of sympathy for the low-profile 285/40 R23 rubberware wrapped around its 23-inch alloys, the suspension soaked up the imperfections like a sponge.

Add to this, the massaging heated and ventilated front seats wrapped in plush leather, a 35-speaker Meridian sound system with noise cancelling speakers in the headrests, a 13.1-inch Pivi Pro infotainment system and 13.7-inch digital instrument cluster, and the extreme comfort is justified.

It was just a pity two fortunate souls weren’t afforded the pleasure of the reclining heated and ventilated rear seats, complete with two 11.4-inch touchscreens at the back of the front seats, inclusive of wireless headsets and automated blinds in the rear windows.

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The Range Rover D350 is powered by a 3.0-litre Ingenium straight-six turbodiesel engine which produces 257 kW of power and a mammoth 700 Nm of torque.

It is mated to super-smooth eight-speed automatic transmission which sends the twist to all four wheels by virtue of Land Rover’s enhanced Terrain Response 2 system.

Fast and frugal

JLR claims the D350 can reach 100 kilometres an hour from a standstill in 6.1 seconds. We had trouble getting close to this number, as the best run Road Test Editor Mark Jones could manage at Gerotek was 8.49 sec. But this discrepancy means little in the greater scheme of things.

The Range Rover D350 First Edition weights almost 2.5 tons and reaching 100 km/h from a standstill in “only” 8.49 sec is no mean feat.

Once on the move, it’s a different ball game. The time it takes to get from 80 km/h to 120 km/h, about the average overtaking zone on the open road, is 5.01 sec.

Astonishingly, this is a faster time than Mark could achieve in either a Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 (5.49 sec) or a Lexus RC F (5.59 sec).

What is also impressive for a car this heavy, is its fuel consumption. We managed to complete a 200 km trip on the open road sticking to the national limit at a very frugal 7.8 litres per 100 km. Even our overall consumption of 11.2 L/100 km for the duration of its stay is commendable.

The R3 552 332 price tag of the Land Rover Range Rover D350 First Edition is bound to reduce many admirers to tears. But in contrast to Sagan’s words, they’ll have to use their tissues on the bus.

Range Rover test data