So we got a 2010 Range Rover Supercharged

The updated Range Rover was launched sometime in the second half of last year, complete with new engines, a new interior and, externally, a new grille. We finally got a 2010 Supercharged for a road test, although ironically, not before the 2011 model has already been announced, with further changes. We also had to sign a contract saying we cannot take it off-road. So we didn’t.

The Range Rover continues to be a handsome truck, even if we believe the best version of this generation was the clean 2003 debut design. The redesigned grille yet again seems a bit desperate, seemingly being facelifted every few years to keep it fresh. By the way, that’s gravel in the photos. That’s about as far as we went off the road.

The rest of this stylishly-boxy truck remains the same, except for a few more LED elements in the tail lamps to further differentiate it from your neighbour’s 2003 Range Rover. Whoever penned the perfect 2003 design, under BMW or Ford or whoever, has made it extremely difficult for the Tata-owned firm’s current designers to better.

The interior is a complete redesign versus the older models, and while stylistically simpler, there seems to be better trim materials in use. Every cream-coloured inch of the new dash is covered in soft-touch materials, all the way down to the footwells. The touchscreen is easy enough to reach, but a bit complicated to get around on-screen. And the newest bit of tech is the replacement of traditional gauges with a huge LCD screen that shows moving computer images of gauges instead. We are still out on whether we liked it or not. The big gear lever has already been replaced for 2011 by a Jaguar-designed rotary gear-selection knob.

The front seats are big, fully power-adjustable and come with individual central armrests and ass-fans. The leather colours are likely customisable when ordering. The high-mounted seats, together with a faintly-visible “grill” of lines on the front glass due to windshield heater elements, give the feeling of driving a prison van.

The rear seats are spacious, come with a/c controls, and the centre section can fold down to reveal cup-holders. The seats also fold down, though they do not form a flat load floor. And stepping on is a bit tough when the Range is at regular height; you have to remember to press a button to lower the air suspension, as far as we could tell.

The cargo compartment is very big. It is accessed through a split two-piece tailgate that is heavy to handle and not powered-operated. We also couldn’t figure out how to remove that light-coloured plastic cover over the cargo area without breaking it. And we couldn’t unlock the rear with the remote sometimes and had to do it by pressing a button on the dash.

The Range Rover used to be the benchmark for us among all luxury SUVs, but it is a bit harder to discern its advantages over competition from Mercedes-Benz and BMW, especially when you take the off-road capability out of the equation. While the 2006 model we tested years ago was excruciatingly impressive, this new one feels a bit less special, except for that ridiculous 510 hp engine with which we got a 0-100 kph time that matched our earlier BMW X5 M tester. But more on that later.

We happened to also have a two-year-old Hyundai Genesis with us at the same time as the “new” Range Rover, and since we were largely limited to on-road driving, we figured it’d be fair to compare the Indo-British stalwart to an upstart Korean luxury car that claims to match the best in the industry. So we did. More in upcoming articles.