Autos Reviews

Mud, Sweat, and Gears - Camp 5 Road, Cayo Province, Belize - Whoever decided to call this overgrown track through the jungle a road must have one twisted sense of humor. In the past eight hours we’ve come just over nine miles through hood-high vegetation and axle-deep mud; our forward progress has often been measured in feet. And we are—quite literally—not out of the woods yet. What little daylight is left on this deeply overcast day is fading fast, and we still have many miles to go before we reach pavement – let alone civilization.

Land Rover LR2 I6 - The 2008 Land Rover LR2 is a 4-door, 5-passenger luxury sport-utility, available in one trim only, the SE. Upon introduction, the LR2 is equipped with a standard 3.2-liter, I6, 230-horsepower engine that achieves 18-mpg in the city and 33-mpg on the highway. A 6-speed automatic transmission with overdrive is standard. The 2008 Land Rover LR2 is all-new for 2008.

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Land Rover LR3 First Drive -

WICK, SCOTLAND — The fifteenth century castle that was to be our home for two nights loomed in the foreground, as our lineup of 2005 Land Rover LR3s maneuvered over rocks, across formidable sand dunes, and along the hard-packed shoreline of Scotland’s North Sea. Following a full day of design and engineering presentations in Gaydon, England, our small cadre of auto writers had been flown to northern Scotland to put the newest Land Rover — the LR3, which replaces the Discovery in the U.S. — through its paces over a period of two days, driving on paved roads and dirt tracks, and through technical off-road/4WD evaluations. The task was to evaluate the LR3’s new smoothness and control on the road and its improved 4WD prowess in the areas of traction, suspension articulation, hill descent, steering, gearing, breakover angle, and angles of approach and departure. (more…)

Range Rover Sport First Drive - Land Rover is known worldwide for creating trucks that handle the toughest-of-the-tough, from the greenways and thick mud of England’s Eastnor Castle to the bone-jarring tracks and inhospitable outback of interior Australia. To date, automakers that specialize in cars rather than trucks have created the niche-oriented high-performance sport-utility vehicles craved by American up-and-comers, companies like BMW and Mercedes-Benz and Porsche. With the new Range Rover Sport, however, it could be said that Land Rover has taken a different approach to the performance-utility market by first gaining a master’s degree in off-road prowess and later a Ph.D. in premium luxury. (more…)

Land Rover Range Rover - Bid the BMW V8 under the Range Rover’s hood goodbye, because for 2006 it’s being replaced with Jaguar-sourced powerplants in both normally aspirated and supercharged formats. The standard 4.4-liter V8 makes 305 horsepower, and the 4.2-liter supercharged V8 cranks out 400 horsepower, making the 2006 Range Rover the most powerful Land Rover ever. (more…)

Land Rover - Land Rover’s inside strategy includes a “No Occupants Left Behind” policy. That is, they want to assure that every passenger enjoys the luxuries and conveniences defining the Rover brand. All seven seats are single buckets, even if positioned right next to one another. (more…)

While the Range Rover Sport competes in the same marketplace as the Porsche Cayenne, Cadillac SRX and BMW X5, there really is no competition off road.

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