The best 4x4xFar

Spen King, father of the Range Rover, was a straight talker with a keen sense of humour. In 2008, two years before he died, I asked whether there’d been any intention of making the original Range Rover ‘the first luxury 4×4’. He found that hugely amusing.

‘Luxury! Certainly not. It was actually a very basic vehicle,’ he said, citing the vinyl seats and hose-out rubber matted floor of the 1970 original. It would take more than a decade for the vehicle now known as the Range Rover Classic to acquire leather upholstery, wood veneer and automatic transmission, in those days the usual accoutrements of British luxury cars.

But it soon built an affluent and extensive owner base as it cleverly blended Downton rural idyll with downtown urban appeal. It was uniquely British, handsome, awesomely capable and – with coil springs, disc brakes at every corner and permanent four-wheel drive – a cut above any other 4×4. But it was never a luxury car.