Range Rover is also a bit of a different beast if you're looking to kit it out. The higher trims actually don't really serve much of a purpose. For example, in North America, you can kit out the Premium Interior Upgrade Pack (a must as it has acoustic glass which is a huge deal for that big *** box) which brings with it all of the higher end leather upgrades as the ATB. You can add other packages as well (wood steering wheel et al) and it is literally an ATB feature wise without the name. The only thing that the ATB gets you, in Canada at least, and I suspect perhaps the same as the US, is that ATB trims are LWB 5 seaters and have the Meridian Signature Sound System which is the best audio system that Range Rover offers. That said, the things ATB gets you (LWB + sound system) is another $50K or something CAD above the SWB P400. The cost benefit analysis is personal, of course, but it's pretty hilarious to us Range Rover people why they allow the plebian trim (which I own) to be optioned out so high without forcing owners to buy the ATB. None of the Meridian systems come close to the Burmester 4D stereo upgrade and/or the B&O Advanced 3D sound system so if you have the former, don't bother. The German OEMs know how to make and tune audio systems. The British don't.

Now, back to sedan land. I may buy an ATB next time as I'm into high end sound systems but I have that in the B&O Advanced 3D sound system on my A8L which was a cool $6500 and is the best money I've ever spent in my life (beating out Bespoke Audio in the Phantom) but I really really do not want a long wheel base vehicle as a 2nd car. All of you drive S classes so you may be able to relate. There's something quite nice about being able to fit, sort of, within a parking space again. It makes parking at the golf place so much easier.

That said I will warn people now. The Range Rover is an incredibly wide car and rides at roughly the same height as a F350. It's extremely high off the ground which commands an extremely commanding presence. However, the thought of something that wide and tall AND long? Yeah...maybe not!

Every time I get into a LWB sedan I'm shocked at how long it is. Every time I get in the Range Rover I'm shocked how I barely can fit within a lane and I'm like 95 stories off the ground. They are complementary vehicles which can't replace each other.

 

Still worth it for the pros it brings actually. Thanks for your reply.

 

True, but there's another solution. Just never drive it

In all seriousness, my D5 A8L became a garage queen the day I learned Audi was no longer going to make ICE powered sedans. If I found out Mercedes was doing the same with the S class, I'd probably buy and store one too. Now Audi has come around to saying they may release a new executive sedan in 2031 and if they do I'm buying it too and storing it forever as long as it's ICE only. My 7 year old A8L has 35,000km. 30,000km of which was between 2019 and 2021...haha. I've driven a total of 500 (hundred, yes) km in the last 3 years...just going to the dealer for annual maintenance.

That said keeping these vehicles forever is simply a money problem and as long as it's a money problem I'm fine with it. My issue is when they stop making parts and my strategy for that is my plan is to buy a spare engine and transmission and to store it somewhere. I am extremely hell bent on keeping that vehicle forever. I have a huge love for large sedans, especially from Audi and Mercedes Benz.

 

Re: Range Rover and S-Class
https://mbworld.org/forums/s-class-w...e-s-class.html
https://mbworld.org/forums/s-class-w...lace-s580.html

 

This is another thread where we went through the gambit of vehicles that are hypotheticals against the RR in the SUV form factor.

https://www.rangerovers.net/threads/...74383/#replies

We came to the conclusion there is nothing that truly competes with the Range Rover. Many of us either own or have driven the Maybach GLS, Bentayga, Cullinan etc.

That said I do need to acknowledge that when the L460 launched (the present gen Range Rover), the poor reliability definitely was a thing but over the years (especially since Range Rover has extremely long cycles) it's gotten incredibly well, as long as people avoid the PHEVs which are a disaster.

The main issues were:

1) rear brake pads would seemingly die. This was because of poorly optimized torque vectoring for vehicles with Dynamic Response Pro. This issue is fixed

2) Wind noise at excessively high speeds - this is why I had mentioned acoustic glass is required. Most people don't pay the $1100 for extensive leather upgrade and acoustic glass. I don't get why people don't pay for this but in any event as someone who took Cullinan to warp 9.9 lately, be aware of the design limitations of taking a big *** box to very high speeds. You can't get around the laws of physics but if you're a normal person driving at normal people speeds, the Range Rover is stupid quiet. I drive my Range Rover at the PSL, but when I choose to be a mad penguin, I take the sedans.

3) Initial years fit and finish was...mediocre. I was honestly expecting a complete sh** show when I took delivery of mine. I was expecting non German build quality - poor fit and finish, poor paint, etc. I have been exceedingly shocked by how well built and how well painted the vehicle is.

4) Reliability of the I6 and V8 (BMW). There are no large issues with these vehicles.

5) The lack of hard buttons - I got used to it, but yeah I wish there were more buttons like in the pre COVID cars before they got rid of the HVAC module.

6) Massage on the S class was never a strong point (don't ever sit in an A8L - it'll ruin what you think cars can do here!) and it's also mediocre on the Range Rover.

7) SUVs will have more side to side wallow. This is the downsides of looking down on the rest of society.

Other than that, it's a pretty inconsequential ownership experience. I have avoided Range Rovers my *ENTIRE LIFE* as I've feared them like I did COVID. I'm glad to finally own one and if the reliability continues to be solid, my intent is to continue owning them until I'm dead. There's nothing else like it.

PS - The Cayenne is not a competitor. A SQ8 is, maybe, but a Cayenne is not. It rides extremely poorly and the interior quality is atrocious. The car is also very noisy even with acoustic glass. That said, the SQ8 is an extremely comfortable and quiet vehicle, but the tradeoff is that it's pretty low to the ground and lacks presence. It's typical Audi camouflage and I mean that with all the respect in the World. The Cayenne drives like a 911 on stilts though. It's just not luxurious or quiet. If I had to trade in the Range Rover I'd buy a SQ8.

The refreshed GLS looks nice though, especially on the interior. I can't get over all of the stars in the exterior though. I'll deal with it on the post FL S class, but not on the GLS.

 

Look into Turo. The cars are beat on. BUT seeing a heavily used car is not a bad thing. I also check cars out a couple years old at Carmax. That has shown me that german cars don't hold up to being beat on, you have to treat them well or they become a rattling mess. I found that to be the case with all of them. Lexus vehicles age much better being roughly treated.

I don't feel any regret, I just always have a wandering eye when it comes to cars.

Yeah I would go fairly basic. I would get the interior packs etc. Honestly I would probably get the 6 or the PHEV over the V8. What is yours?

GREAT PHEV from Land Rover, 60 miles of EV range is really great.

I also think I would get the SWB RR vs the LWB, I think it looks "proper" in the SWB the same way the S Class and big sedans look "proper" in the LWB.

I hope they don't ruin the RR with the refresh by adding passenger screens etc

And for me I can write it off which makes it very attractive. it cuts the effective cost of driving the car in half.

 

Haha, love the contrarian view. They’re old, they be trippin all day long.
Not sure if I can fully agree on the stars, but I don’t find them as offensive as many on here do and I think they are much less offensive that what some of the other manufacturers are doing.

 

The MY27 refresh is right around the corner and it will be extremely minor just like it always has for Range Rover. We're all holding our breath as far as the full redesign in 2032 but that's still a ways away. The refresh is rumored to be adding in physical buttons so that should be good if that's your thing.

I have the p400 fully kitted out like an ATB which is the i6. While the plug-in hybrid sounds great the reliability is atrocious so just be careful. Phevs all are suffering reliability issues in the luxury space and Range Rover is not an exception but they're hardly the only ones.

For me, I live in an extremely rural area where a closest gas station is 30 minutes away each way in the Range Rover is my daily. The amount of time I would spend going to and from a gas station with the V8 just didn't make sense but like Savage geese said in his review it is one hell of an engine.

(Sorry for funny punctuations above as I'm using voice transcription)

 

That’s what happened with my SL. It’s a 2019 and I had always planned on getting the next generation (I’ve had 7 of them) when it came out. However, I was SO disappointed with the R232 SL’s, I just sort of stopped driving my car very much. I take it for regular spins to keep the juices flowing, but she (Mighty Mouse identifies as a female) only has 4,600 miles now and she just had her 7th birthday. I just keep her tucked away in the garage, out of the sun. The car still has that new car aroma. Here’s a risqué photo from her last service. Never been driven in the rain, never been through an automated car wash. I do the washing & polishing myself.

 

You have no idea how big of a smile you gave me just now. When I used to drive my A8 in the winter it was always for some reason like needing to go to the vet or whatever. But after every Drive in the winter I would wash the car both on top and also rinse it with a water broom underneath so even today the car has zero rust. I love how we love our car so much!! 😍😍

 

I'm 44 and I think the stars are over the top. They're not "offensive", but they aren't understated or classy and thats what I like about the S Class.

Its like wearing a LV belt or a Gucci shirt with the stupid Gs all over it. I think it makes somebody look like a clown

Yeah I will do research into the PHEV. We have a PHEV now and its great. I did watch that Savagegeese video last night.

 

Yeah many brands have even canceled their PHEV models all together. Majority of buybacks are PHEVs. I have been looking for PHEV SUV, but there is no real SUV on the market that can replace my GLS, so I accepted the fact to go with ICE drivetrain for my next SUV regardless of what it is. Every PHEV SUV on on the market today is either a cheap japanese PHEV and am not willing to downgrade, or a model that disappeared, or strictly a 2-row, leaving 2 options only and one of them is the range rover which is a big no go in PHEV as you said. I can only imagine that combining PHEV and a range rover together is just a terrible choice or combo. For an SUV that I use for trips, I can't take any hassle, frankly even for a daily nowadays.
The one I drove was LWB, and had rear-wheel steering (it might be standard from what salesman told me) and honestly it felt even shorter than my GLS. Still great fit and replacement for my GLS but doesn't get even close to replace my daily luxury sedan from a use case perspective. I had 3 X7s in the past, all with DHP, and that was so close to a sedan driving experience because the car is too low unlike the Range Rover, but even then, a lot of luxury feel and excitement was missing. I hope you can keep your A8 for as long as you can, or at least until you find a good sedan that you can replace it with.

 

This is one of the saddest aspects of modern automotive engineering for me and reminds me when automakers introduced direct injection. Up front, PHEVs are like DI. There are benefits "up front", but the long term consequences are catastrophic. PHEVs are extremely hot right now but for all of the wrong reasons, especially because of an underlying flaw that no automaker has chosen to solve.

Reliability wise because of all of the components to make PHEV aside, the biggest problem is that the 48V batteries used for PHEVs are all NMC. They are not LFP. The degregation of usable range is significant after 3-4 years and after that, these cars become, for all intents and purposes, ICE only unless the super expensive battery pack is replaced. If they are not, then all these cars are just carrying another 50-100 pounds in batteries that no longer do anything useful.

All of the upfront gas savings is gone. All of the benefits for PHEVs are gone. But yet so many people fall for the PHEV trap because they get '100 miles' of EV only range up front. As a car guy, it pains me to see this happening let alone people spending more money up front to buy a PHEV - only to suffer from reliability issues and dead batteries in 5 years.

The answer to the above is "lease it" which, I guess, is a fair argument, but is that 100 miles of EV range worth a car that is (I'm guessing), 1.5x or 2x more unreliable? I guess that's a personal thing but for me it certainly is not!

 

Yeah I lease so beyond 3 years I’m not worried about it. I will have to really track the EV range and see if I have any degradation 3 years 30k miles in. It still says 37 miles when it’s charged but I haven’t tracked it to see if it really gets 37 miles. No reliability issues so far (knock on wood)

What we like about it is the nice smooth EV driving around town and not having to worry about charging on trips. Not about gas savings at all.

Would love an EV for trips but gotta have 400 miles of range, at least 350.

 

And most people unfortunately fall for the trap and jump on it for reasons like gas savings and the like, and they forget it actually costs more to buy and own unless you keep it long enough. I will only consider PHEV for a model that is known to offer reliable drivetrains in PHEV mode, and certainly Range Rover is off the list 100%. I was hopping the GLS can be in PHEV cause the GLE PHEV is awesome. Same for the X7 based on how X5 PHEVs are doing. But no luck. That leaves no real options for PHEV so I gave up.
Right now 48V alone are barely holding up, so PHEV would make it even worse. The other issue is range, with SUV PHEV, the actual range in winter for a heavy car like and in an SUV geometry/body is barely one third or one forth of the claimed range. I had sedan phevs, and although range drop is reasonable in cold climate, it was a not as bulky as a large SUV and the drop was less than ideal. So sometimes I actually think I should be grateful that all PHEV SUV options are terrible and to just not think about it. I will just drive EV daily, and leave the dream of enjoying in EV drive mode to be realized in an actual EV, and then drive ICE in an SUV that I use for road trips. That's just the best balance without compromises for me. Like you said, it is also certainly not worth it for me either the more I think about it. Maybe REEV cars will make it doable one day.

 

I go to extreme lengths to chase a vehicular experience that is devoid of all sound and noise that has a ride comfort that is unparalleled so I wonder if I'm a sadist because EVs should be the way to go but alas, I am madly in love with ICE powered vehicles.

My POV is that EVs will not be in the executive & up sedan space anytime soon. The issue with car reviewers and the like is that most of them do not regularly drive extremely expensive cars, but my opinion here is based on my own experience with the Rolls Royce Spectre (a fully electric 2 door vehicle). What struck me the most is, comparatively to the Ghost I had or the Phantom I have is how "noisy" it was in comparison. Now - I concede, the vast majority of people would get into a Spectre and comment on its lack of noise levels, but interestingly enough C&D, and I believe Edmunds, did noise testing on that EV vs a Ghost, and it was 5db apart. That's a World away in noise level land as dB is logarithmic.

One doesn't have to look far to understand the compromises that RR faced. A Phantom gets ~12mpg in the city and 18mpg on the highway. A Ghost gets a few better. These are extremely heavy cars due to their mandate of being extremely quiet and comfortable and while it's easy to just "fill up" with gas, EV models need to be able to store all of that equivalent energy to deal with a car that is so supremely heavy.

So from my perspective, if the S classes of the world do go full EV, which I do not believe there are plans to (? - I could be wrong), there will be significant compromises to its insulative properties unless technology continues to develop. I do wonder what the new fully EV Jaguar would be like, though while I am somewhat risk tolerant having bought a Range Rover, there is no World I live in where I drive a 1st generation Jaguar product, let alone an EV

I'm crazy. Just not that crazy.

 

I had not looked at the Bentley website in a couple of years and when I finally did so recently, I was astonished to find out that they ONLY offer PHEV drivetrains right now. Looking at a few reviews, it was mentioned that when the transition takes place from electric drive to ICE, that the handoff is not all that seamless. Unbelievable! And, to make matters worse, the only all electric drive vehicle currently planned by Bentley is the upcoming Barnato, a horrible looking SUV. Oh how the mighty have fallen!

 

Where do you see that? The Flying Spur is a P0 MHEV, which is just like the existing ICE S class or the ICE Audi A8L. So it's technically a mild hybrid, but not a plug in hybrid electric vehicle.

EDIT: Actually, I think you are right. This just made me extremely sad. I missed this.

 

I currently drive a BMW I7 and apart from what I feel is too much tire noise when driving on worn pavement at highway speeds, the car is unbelievably quiet. I am spoiled living where I do, as many of the main thoroughfares are maintained to ribbon smooth condition and my car is virtually silent on such roads. For my daily driver, I am a true electric drive fan and hope to never have a need to go back to an ICE vehicle. Looking forward to test driving the Range Rover EV.

 

 

Yeah you hit the limitation perfectly. Wind noise is easy to shut out - acoustic glass and rubber seals. However, shutting out road noise is a losing proposition for EV makers. For every pound of insulation that is required (and a *lot* is required to cut out road/tire noise), X pounds of batteries would need to be added. It's the same reason that ultra long haul flights are extremely expensive for the airlines. At some point, for the airplane to another 1 mile after 10,000 miles, it needs to carry more and more pounds of jet fuel. Jet fuel to carry jet fuel is the problem.

This is, at present, a technical limitation which is why your I7 can't get to the same levels of a Rolls Royce ICE product. I have no doubt it will be solved one day, but for now, automakers are forced to choose, and you as the consumer are also forced to choose.

To each their own! I've never been a big fan of the ICE vs EV fanboy debate. The more people who buy EVs the better it is for me. I truly want ICE powered cars to be niche and if people want to go EV, then it's win win.

Also - just so you are aware. The Range Rover EV is like 4? years late. That's also another product I personally wouldn't touch. 1st generation Range Rovers are already terrible reliability wise...and this one is a full out first gen EV! Could be, erm, interesting

I don't personally subscribe to what I heard on YT lately, but the guy made an argument that the Ghost made his A8L feel like an A4. Disagreements aside, one does have to admire the effort that Rolls Royce goes into making the ultimate sedan. It is, yes, a World of difference but that is all weight and weight is a huge problem for EVs.

 

I haven't driven a Spectre but I have driven the i7 extensively and I really love that drivetrain. The tire noise that Streamliner mentions is because of the lack of any engine noise canceling that out.

MB is going to have an EV S Class but they will also still sell the ICE S Class. They are coming out with EV models for all their tiers that look similar but are on EV dedicated platforms.

 

Yeah and that's the problem and benefit of EVs. Human beings will always notice the loudest part of any car and once you remove the engine the next logical noise that one would hear is wind noise and then barring that it would be road noise. One can cancel it all out but that's weight and weight is range. I think Jaguars now using an 800 volt architecture and I wonder what that will do to things but no doubt it'll be a matter of time before it's 1200 volts or whatever. The future is interesting especially with the seriously constrained energy capacity in the United States for one.

AI growth will no doubt hamper EV adoption though. It's a fluid time to be in!

 

Well, you have to know that I went to test drive the I7 “KICKING & SCREAMING!” I was a “NEVER AN EV” guy. I had driven the EQS & the Tesla Model S and hated both. But, I was so turned off by my most recent MB S Class experiences and not impressed with the ICE 7 Series I drove, so I was running out of choices.

Then I started seeing these reviews where they said that the EV version of the 7 was WAY better than the ICE, and I had some folks on this site urging me to checkout the I7, so I finally did. Less than 10 minutes into the test drive, I had this huge grin on my face and I was pretty much a dead duck right then and there. I ordered my I7 xDrive60 with most all options other than those pertaining to the rear seat. The real surprise was the Autobahn Pkg. which really improves the handling of the massive car.

I didn’t want an EV, but the I7 experience has thoroughly changed my attitude. SO many fewer moving parts. No transmission constantly shifting gears. No visits to the gas station. AND, the I7 has been virtually bulletproof in its reliability over the 20 or so months I’ve had it so far. Sort of like the old Western Airlines ad: “Electric propulsion, the ONLY way to fly!”

 

BMW needs to get together with one of the major tire companies to build a tire just for the I7, using every available sound deadening technology known. I currently am running Pirelli PZ4 tires which are the best yet, but Rolls-Royce uses the PZ4 on their Spectre and the tires sized for the Spectre have foam sound deadening material in them, but the PZ4’s that fit my I7 don’t. Go figure. AND, the PZ4’s are wearing out unbelievably fast—and I drive very conservatively. A bit more insulation around the wheel wells would be welcomed as well.