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Egrets were flying low overhead as we rumbled down the slippery dirt road in Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge, closed only days before due to flooding from the recent storm. We had hoped the venue would prove the perfect testing ground for this legendary vehicle’s equally renowned off-road prowess. Nervous as a high school kid on his first date,...




Egrets were flying low overhead as we rumbled down the slippery dirt road in Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge, closed only days before due to flooding from the recent storm. We had hoped the venue would prove the perfect testing ground for this legendary vehicle’s equally renowned off-road prowess.

Photo by James Gaffney/The Times-Picayune

Nervous as a high school kid on his first date, I set the “terrain program” knob to “mud ruts” and switched the transmission to low-gear ratio mode. Then I activated the compressed air suspension feature, which literally raises the vehicle up several inches from the chassis for greater ground clearance. (Note: Pressing this button repeatedly back and forth will not make your Range Rover buck up and down like a low-rider.)



“Hang on,” I told my traveling companion.



I inched with caution down a treacherous stretch of topography, all the while checking my cell phone for reception in this god-knows-where stretch of backwoods Louisiana. Zero bars — great. If anything bad happened, we were out of luck. And that would be before the 15-mile walk back to the nearest house with a land line to call roadside assistance.



As luck would have it, on a patch of deplorably unforgiving road we encountered — and conquered — no fewer than three out of five terrains for which this vehicle is famous for tackling without so much as breaking a sweat.



What I should have remembered is this four-door, five-passenger Goliath’s ironclad claim to off-road throwdown supremacy had been etched in stone 40 years earlier during a well-publicized, test-drive safari Range Rover engineers took across the North African desert. Ditto for the their Alaska-to-Argentina kidney bender that included 99 days alone spent crossing the infamous Darién Gap, an impenetrable hell-swamp between Panama and Columbia.



By comparison my off-road adventure was as risky as pulling a red wagon full of kittens across the lobby at NOMA. But you would have never known it from my sweaty palms.



Spoiled rotten

For a savage from the lowlands such as myself, sitting behind the wheel of a legendary and luxurious Range Rover was in and of itself noteworthy. And I wasn’t about to miss a trick. If the uber-sophisticated, dark-charcoal monochromatic interior of the Range Rover’s Bentley-like luxurious cabin doesn’t woo you at first sight, you’ll have only to notice how virtually everything is swathed in high-grade European leather to realize you’re not in Kansas anymore. From the triple-stitched dash and seat upholstery to the inside door panels and center-armrest storage area, everything it seems is appointed with leather so soft and supple that most other cabin interiors by comparison are destined to feel like sackcloth from the Middle Ages.

Photo by James Gaffney/The Times-Picayune

The headliner is suede and fascia buttons now feature a satin chrome-plated finish. Even the burl wood trim is so dark as to blend perfectly with the color palette, offering a flourish of shiny luxuriousness upon which the eye gleefully grazes.



The only accent is the polished chrome trim found around the A/C vents, door handles, gear-shifter plate and center console, making this perhaps the most understated, elegant cabin in a vehicle costing less than a gazillion dollars.



Inside the owner’s manual pouch is a little wipe cloth for cleaning the fingerprints off of the cabin’s center-console touchscreen navigation and audio monitor. Yes, the Range Rover will spoil you in that oh-so-British sort of way.



Elsewhere, the mechanical tachometer and speedometer have bee

Tags: Land Rover, is-featured

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SPLIT PERSONALITY: From city nights to rocky heights, for the Range Rover it's game on! was originally published by New Orleans Auto Reviews: Land Rover. Read the full story by clicking here.