Land Rover lights the way | PH Footnote

Jaguar hopes to gatecrash the luxury market later this year - it could do worse than follow Range Rover's lead

Perceived luxury is a hot topic at JLR. In the not-too-distant future - before the end of the year, in fact, if it keeps to its own schedule, Jaguar will attempt to go places it has never gone before, and rival the likes of Bentley for soft-touch opulence. From a distance, it is a tall order. The best of the opposition has decades of experience in keeping its well-heeled clientele happy; Jaguar, meanwhile, has in recent years taken several agonising goes to get a comparatively modest business exec right. Matt Bird’s I-Pace from 2021 is perfectly pleasant to sit in - but even when new, you’d hesitate to use the ‘L’ word.

Thank goodness then for the bank of knowledge steadily accumulated at sister brand Land Rover. The arrival of a Range Rover Sport D350 Autobiography at PH ahead of Christmas was a welcome chance not only to revisit the car generally, but also to consider its maker’s knack of making you feel good about your immediate surroundings. Particularly from a model variant that, in the grand scheme of things, does not represent Land Rover really putting its shoulder into it.

The manufacturer’s best effort, you’ll hardly need reminding, is saved for the full-size Range Rover, an SUV that easily ranks among the finest luxury cars in the world. Which, at face value, presents something of a challenge for the Sport, given that it now sits squarely behind the flagship in Land Rover’s House of Brands strategy. As it ever was, you might argue, though it is conceivable that the positioning makes the model vaguely less visible to customers - or at any rate, less prominent in their thinking when asked to envisage ‘Range Rover’ as a brand in its own right.

Which would be unfortunate because the D350, in upmarket trim, is a terrific choice for anyone lucky enough to be lavishing upwards of £100k on a large, diesel-powered family car. It is a John Lewis Christmas TV ad on wheels: expensively developed, lovely to look at and unashamedly aspirational. Even allowing for the fact that most top-end SUVs tend to chime well with the holidays (being good in bad weather and easily capable of swallowing a six-foot Norwegian spruce), the Sport still feels a notch above its equally well-made German rivals. To drive and to sit in.

This much we knew. A more pertinent thought, with Jaguar's rebrand taking shape, is how cleverly differentiated the current model is from its stablemates. The vague notion that the Sport sits in conceptual space between the Range Rover and the current Defender is made real by the wider design and engineering effort. Where the Range Rover is stately and wafty and architecturally upright, the Sport has flow and poise; where the Defender is rugged and hard-wearing, the Sport is swift and stylish. And the more time you spend in it, the more you begin to appreciate how appealing the middle ground really is.

It helps, of course, that the D350, courtesy of its 3.0-litre straight-six Ingenium motor, really is the gift that keeps on giving. It handsomely lives up to all the diesel engine adjectives: amenable, bountiful, enjoyably throaty - enjoyable all over, really. It made the Defender even more likeable to drive when it finally migrated to Land Rover’s bestseller, yet it might be best of all in the Sport, underwriting all the big-shouldered dynamic charm with sub-6-second-to-60mph performance.

The key component - or at least the notable difference in mindset - is the way in which everything is made to feel effortless in the Sport. Because Land Rover did its best to endow the Defender with at least an inkling of its predecessor’s hard-nosed charm, it is very receptive to being manhandled. The Sport will oblige these instincts too, yet intuitively it responds much more favourably to smaller, slower inputs - just the kind you make when you’re driving smartly for the pleasure of it rather than just to get somewhere more promptly.

Doubtless there is some relaxed holiday vibe in the mix there, too, but for the first time in a very long time, a few weeks with the D350 had me convinced that, were the lottery syndicate numbers ever to come up, it might be a better fit for a space in the six-car garage than a Defender (although the idea of a Dakar-spiced OCTA might have something to say about that). Either way, the broader point is that Land Rover (and by extension, JLR) is not only adept at making a proper Range Rover live up to its full-fat, six-figure billing, but has also perfected the art of producing a slightly cheaper, slightly leaner version too, without it seeming like a pale copy of the original, even when sharing so much of the hardware.

Suffice it to say, the company will need all this nous in the coming years as Jaguar’s output (with any luck) eventually goes from one low-volume luxury car to several bigger-selling ones. They will be different again, of course, but also sit on the same platform and be powered in much the same way. They will need to be exceptionally nice to sit in, very lovely to steer, and, assuming the firm has accepted some home truths, objectively handsome. In other words - and as our first go behind the wheel intimates - it will need to sell us the idea of what it means to own and drive a Jaguar in 2026 and beyond. Thank goodness its fundamental ability to do all that is so richly proven.

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