Our Cars: Range Rover P550e Autobiography

I think I mentioned already how keen some people seem to be to see the Range Rover stolen, or hear that it’s broken down. I know most of us are guilty of a little schadenfreude from time to time but there seems to be little we like more than giving hard working British car manufacturers with genuinely superb product a really good kicking. Just ask the folk at McLaren.

Well it’s not been nicked and now security updates have made it one of the less popular products among the light-fingered community, I don’t think it’s going to be. But I really don’t want it to go wrong. Of course, save the short-term inconvenience of being stranded somewhere, it shouldn’t matter to your reporter whether it breaks or not, but the truth is I just don’t want to give those who delight in mocking the misfortunes of others the pleasure.

But there have been a couple of times when I truly thought the story of this car was going to play straight into their hands. For a start it is unbelievably complex with little motors powering everything from the door handles to the release mechanism for the charging cable. (And while I’m on, Land Rover please illuminate the socket – when it’s late, dark and raining and you have one hand carrying your luggage, blindly stabbing in its general direction is not the best way to end a journey.) I’d be fascinated to learn how many motors and ECUs are on board. But so far and with 8500 miles on the clock, all have behaved impeccably.