Published:
22 July 2022We will come onto how hushed the Range Rover's Ingenium six-cylinder diesel engine is later on, but it’s worth noting that the performance its 345bhp and 516lb ft deliver will in normal driving often come with you barely knowing it’s switched on.
Even when you ask a lot of this powertrain – and a fully fuelled weight of 2667kg as tested means you might need to – it’s smooth and unobtrusive.
From rest, two-up and fully gassed, it went from 0-60mph in 6.3sec – a little off the claim but a number that still means it’s a rapid and capable machine. A smoothly responsive one, too, with easily selectable gear ratios if you opt to use the gearshift paddles yourself, and a long throttle travel with predictable kickdown if you opt to let the gearbox software do it for you.
In more relaxed driving, this is one of those cars where it’s usually unnoticeable which gear it’s adopting, and while there’s only so much the best software and hardware in the world can do about the fuel consumption of a car of this size, it does its best, adopting as a high gear as sensible without labouring the engine or harming the refinement. At a 70mph cruise, an eighth gear ratio that means the engine is spinning over at just 1550rpm keeps it particularly unobtrusive.
Braking was less impressive. Unfortunately, the test track never quite managed to dry out during our day at Millbrook, so the car had to deal with some damp patches. Even so, a 60-0mph time of 3.67sec and a 70-0mph distance of 66.2m are poor.
