Cars mirror humans: that is what they are for. (If they didn’t, everyone would drive a 2012 Ford Fiesta). And so, cars are obese too now. They are growing 1cm wider every two years, and only half of new cars now fit into on-street parking spaces, though car parks – presumably elitist! – fare better. Hellish, isn’t it?
If I could choose a car to drive – Aston Martin aside – it would be a Range Rover
I could fill this page with the horrors the Sports Utility Vehicle inflicts, particularly in cities. It’s a trope but in my experience it’s young men in hot hatches who reverse round corners at 30mph and, as such, exist in a state of pre-manslaughter, who are the danger. It’s true that the SUV driver who used to reverse into our drive in Hampstead each morning at 8 a.m. irritated me, but that is because she beeped the horn, presumably because she was too short to see out of the back window. (Note to driving test examiners: all women are pretending to see out the back window). The typical Hampstead SUV driver – it’s usually a Range Rover – is a careful driver. She doesn’t want to scratch the paintwork. She is probably unconscious of what SUV means. There isn’t much sport to city driving unless wealth signalling is a sport. Or parking. The acronym is performative.
Nor is it the SUV’s fault that British train travel is among the most expensive in Europe, that rural buses are a ruinous myth and increasingly know it: our local Mousehole to Penzance hopper has been replaced by what looks like an ice-cream van. Much of the hatred directed at the SUV – OK, the Range Rover – could be solved by a rational transport plan for Britain. But that’s less fun than hatred.
I drive a VW Fox, which I’d be amazed if you heard of. It’s popular in urban South America and the most valuable thing in my model is the petrol, even if the tank isn’t full. But if I could choose a car to drive – Aston Martin aside – it would be a Range Rover, and a real one: the top-of-the-line fiend, now gifted a luxe interior because this is for princesses now. (Formerly it was for dukes. Google Prince Philip and collision. Also Prince Philip and hearse). I wonder if everyone feels the same way: you sense it in the quality of the rage. Envy. I once walked out of Hartlepool train station and watched Boris Johnson’s Range Rover motorcade process through the town. It looked bizarre. A car designed for a near metre of Scottish river and the mountain beyond travelling through a post-industrial landscape for a photo opportunity after which he would run away – in the same Range Rover? What for? Because I can, damn you, is the answer. Throw down the theoretical mountain, I’ll climb it for you.
The Rolls Royce and the Bentley aside – and the supercars, which come with a peculiar psychosis all their own – the Range Rover is the king of the British road. Rival SUVs from BMW and Audi and whatnot live in its shadow, though I am fond of the Toyota Landcruiser, an SUV so devil-may-care it feels like it is on a suicide mission for pleasure.
I borrowed a Range Rover last year and drove it to the Cotswolds. Can cars preen? This one did. The Range Rover’s only natural predator is the Bentley Bentayga and the Rolls Royce Cullinan, as I said, but I think you need to be a bit mad to choose a Bentayga over a GT and a Cullinan over a Ghost, unless you really are going to drive to the Burning Man festival in Nevada. That’s not to say I’d turn either down, just for the possibilities of the river and the mountain: like a novel, these cars can give you a theoretical life.
Among Range Rovers, it’s only natural predator is a newer Range Rover, and this one was very new: Charente grey, with a 3.0 litre engine and all the glorious engineering I just don’t care about, because I only care how it makes me feel. There is a sliding panoramic roof, cameras – what is their status in driving tests? – leather seats, carpet mats, and a cabin air purification system. It’s fifth generation – they were invented in 1970, but they’ve come on, like greed has – sinuous, like an idealised old-style London taxi and vast: five metres long, and two metres wide. It was a blessed weekend. Everything gave way, except the sheep, but they would have done if I’d pushed it.
The Range Rover speaks to the narcissism of the age: to the will to power, and space. Its popularity is a sign that the social contract is splintering, sure – like people who watch TV on trains without headphones or those who film people having heart attacks for TikTok – but such is the quality of the splintering the critic can only say: what an evil. Now get me one.
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