The Rise of the SUV

RANGE ROVER (1970-1996)

While not the first SUV by some margin, the Range Rover was the first of its type to be designed from scratch as an off-roader for people who weren’t farmers or soldiers. It was also the first to truly become a fashion icon and the ultimate lifestyle accessory – as such, for better or for worse, it codified the genre and provided the benchmark for all SUVs that would follow.

Against the high-tech, high-luxury behemoth that carries the name today, the original Range Rover of 1970 seems impossibly crude and compact. Ever since the launch of the Land Rover in 1948, Rover had realised that there was a market for a vehicle combining the all-terrain abilities of its 4x4 with the comfort of its saloon cars. It took 20 years of proposals and false starts, but the Range Rover was the final result – and it met its brief perfectly.

Long-travel, low-rate coils replaced the Land Rover’s medieval leaf springs to give both car-like ride comfort and formidable wheel travel, while a self-levelling strut on the rear axle meant that composure was retained even with 3.5 tonnes on the tow hitch or half a ton in the load bed. A detuned version of the 3.5-litre V8 engine provided locomotive-like grunt for towing and hill-climbing and enough smooth, refined power to reach 100mph. Permanent four-wheel drive (with a lock on the centre differential when things got really tricky) put that power down, be it on tarmac, dirt, mud, snow, grass or sand, while four-wheel servo-assisted disc brakes brought it all to an assured stop. David Bache’s styling was a typically masterful job, being almost brutally industrial but somehow elegant.

Intended for the well-heeled country set, professionals whose work took them outdoors (surveyors, engineering foremen, property developers, estate managers and the like) and the sort of people who wanted to tow a caravan up an Alpine mountain during a blizzard, demand for Range Rover exceeded all expectations and came