Video : Range Rover L405 TV advert

Who says that off-roaders are all about the school-run and choking up city streets? The current-generation Range Rover L405 is in the running to be one of the best all-round cars in the world, combining superb interior ambiance, great on-road dynamics and excellent off-road ability.

This advert, now five years old, gave potential buyers and fans the opportunity to live the trans-continental dream vicariously behind the wheel of a Range Rover, taking in France, the Riviera and Lake Como…

…before finishing off with a nice nod to where it all started – the wonderful original 1970 Range Rover. Let’s be honest, as much as we like the L405 in this video, it’s the older car that’s the true star of this video.

Click the link, and enjoy.

Keith Adams
Latest posts by Keith Adams (see all)

45 Comments

  1. off-roaders ARE about the school run and choking up city streets – oh, and clogging up narrow lanes and holding up traffic while turning right and damaging kerbs and verges and generally saying to the world ‘i have more money than sense, stuff you’

  2. Range Rovers are successful and supposedly wonderful vehicles particularly suited to Footballers. Unfortunately, where I live, one parks right on the street corner and because of its size and high roof, it blocks my visibility when pulling out from the side road.

    Of course I appreciate other SUV’s have this effect too…

  3. I spent the entire ad waiting to see the bulldozer appear, possibly the wrong sound track to use in that setting?

  4. Think the advert is rather good.

    Somehow, though, I always think later generation Range Rovers don’t capture enough ‘feel’ of the original. I always think they shoulkd be a tad more retro in a Beetle, Fiat 500 fashion.

  5. Nice, but there’s a whiff of a squashed P38 about it. I prefer the last generation one, and the first!

  6. Sounds like a Honda advert but it’s great that they acknowledge the heritage.

    I’m currently working through the entire BBC Lovejoy DVD set – inevitably it includes a feast of 80’s/90’s cars including Lady Jane’s ever changing Range Rover – now quite hankering after having a Classic LSE.

  7. The original 1970 Rangie was actually a pretty compact animal. I had one of the last ‘Classic’ badged 1995 models, a colleague pulled up in the car park near me when I got it it and asked how I could park such an oversized monstrosity. We then got a tape measure out and found his MK1 Mondeo was actually 4 inches longer, although the Rangie was about an inch wider. He shut up after that…

  8. the Land Rover factory sure must go through a lot of Zambezi silver metalic paint ….it seems to be their favourite.

  9. I was also wondering about the digger!

    Not to mention the men in dark glasses who appear on the hillsides.

    CP

  10. Give me a series 1 with hose down interior, and manual gearbox, with no fancy electronics to go wrong any day.

  11. I will know that area, and the cause they did not showed the off road piece is, because that new Range Rover model had as the other Range Rover models too, no wings!
    The valley beside the street is about 150 meters deep. I think the best way to do that is with a helicopter or with a long piece of rope. Sorry!

  12. @15 – good luck in finding a nice soft dash LSE, they are a lovely car, the one I had was a standard SE rather than the long wheelbase. Sadly most have succumbed to terminal rust, the 1992 onwards models were made from much poorer quality steel compared to the earlier models and they literally rot from the inside out.

  13. I noticed that the original Range Rover was smaller. However when one considers that the Austin Maxi is the same size as the current Fiesta (apart from inside where it knocks spots off it) & ADO17 is the same size as a Mark 1 Focus (same comment re the internal comparison applies), it hasn’t grown as much as one may have expected in over forty years.

  14. I quite like this latest version: more elegant, less aggressive and with less sharp elbows than its predecessor – here’s hoping the profile of the clientele will follow suit.

    It’s all relative, though; give me a Series 1 any day.

    I wonder if this one will continue the tradition of smashing its predecessor’s record for in-warranty claims?

  15. In response to Number 2.

    My RR is used daily for a multitude of things, wears General Tire AT tyres unlike most RR’s. We also live in rural Scotland so a 4×4 is more or less essential around here, so we can cope with the poorly maintained roads, floods and of course what ever the winter decides to throw at us. It is not unusual for the village to be cut off in winter. They are also useful for work and of course play. Look at the pic of mine in normal use, well normal use for round here, even one of our neighbouring farms uses his RR Sport for taking livestock to market. Then give it a wash and your set to arrive where ever you want in style!

  16. If he’d been driving a Land Rover instead, do you think he might have been generous enough to get his hands dirty and stop and help the guys reload the tractor trailer instead? I’d like to think so.

    Apart from heros like Ken, above, for many this is a simply a big luxury vehicle (with no intent to take it off road) that’s a true successor to the Rover P5 of old. I don’t have a problem with that; I’m just happy that this is designed and built in the UK and is properly competitive (and not a clone of) whatever the flock of sheep currently buy from Germany and Japan.

    I feel like we are meant to know who the older guy, who drove away in the Classic, was; any ideas?

  17. Pleased to hear it! Glad to hear it gets used as intended too. I’m a Land Rover / Range Rover enthusiast myself, it’s just that financial reality keeps me at the Freelander 2 end of the spectrum! Oh yes, given half the opportunity, my FL2 gets up to its axles in mud too 😀

    I’d still prefer to have based the advert around helping another road user out, rather than just driving around and leaving him. You know, something like his outdoorsy mates jumping out of the back of the RR, re loading the hay and then using the RR to tow a stuck tractor and trailer out of tick mud!

    As it is, it shows the car to be rather nice, but the driver to be a complete knob! On that basis, wouldn’t he be better off driving a Q7? 😉

  18. That last paragraph reminds me, I wonder if Range Rover have made a deliberate decision to distance themselves from the Royal Family and leave that association to Audi?

    If this is true, it might turn out to have been a very screwed idea…

  19. @28 and 29

    Nothing wrong with a Freelander 2, I like them, glad to hear it goes off road too. I have multi purpose car and will use it accordingly! Ah yes the infamous Q7, they seem to suffer from RR envy, them and Touareg drivers. A friend has a 2009 Touareg, quite a high spec version, and it still has a manual dipping rear-view mirror! If I get tailgated it is either by one of those, or small car drivers.

    I read somewhere (might even have been on here) that LR/RR kept the upright square look for the RR range as they wanted them to look Royal and Regal, some how I cant see one of the royals being in an Audi derived 4×4

  20. @20, I have and its mint,no gas conversion either thank god,i have to arrange a viewing and it is strong money,to be honest,the owner is in two minds-his cashflow that sort of thing but i am hoping to own it.

  21. I guess number 2 cannot afford a Range Rover, maybe he logged into here by mistake, instead of the Guardian or Socialist Worker?

  22. Tigger, The idea of the driver helping other road users would not work in the key emerging markets for Range Rover such as Russia.

    Telling potential Russian customers that buying a Range Rover means you get your suit ruined helping Russian Peasant farmers out instead of leaving them choking in your dust will not sell many units to the Moscow rich.

  23. This is an high end motor,if i could afford one,i would feel entitled to be a knob and help no-one,if you own one outright,you either shit ten pound notes or wipe your arse on them,they are very very expensive to run and maintain.How many shagged X5’s and Q7’s from the second hand arena have folk saw that are on thier last legs after six years because the second or third owner has bought into the dream and they cant afford the nightmares?to hell with the commies!

  24. @35

    I own mine outright, I never have car loans, you only ever loose money. I also look after my cars, I use a local independent who has lots of LR/RR experience and use genuine parts. To be honest they are not overly expensive to maintain. Mine just had track rod and a ball joint replaced, the arm was £70 and the ball joint £20, hardly expensive, although I agree that some other parts are, but not the regular service parts. I once had Jeep Grand Cherokee that was in the garage every three months and cost a fortune to maintain, way more than the RR has ever cost me. My RR is also a V8, round my local roads I am lucky to average 16MPG and get about 23 on a long run on a motorway, however you do not buy these cars because of their fuel economy! 🙂 At the end of the day it is my choice to own it, and I wouldn’t change it!

  25. I love the Range Rover, new or old. Yes, it’s an easy car to knock because of it’s position at the top of the SUV tree (and people do seem to knock it, sadly) but let’s face it – what is the first car you would you buy if you won the lottery? Bet for most people it would be a Range Rover – it certainly would be for me.

    Yes, it’s in a different league to the first ones when it comes to technology, performance (and price, although it always was an expensive vehicle) but it can still do everything you will ever ask of it, and many people in the countryside do use them to do everything.

    I actually think that the Range Rover (not the Sport or Evoque) is more of an “honest” countryside vehicle than the Defender is these days; new Defenders are too posh, with metallic paint, air con and alloys, and are bought for their looks, not for their off road ability by most owners. The city centres are full of them. Flat green Defenders with steel wheels and windy windows are of course exempt from from this generalisation! It would be interesting to see the proportion of “fancy” Defenders to “basic” Defenders. A friend of mine recently wanted a base model non-metallic 110 as a farm hack – it took months to find one, yet there were fancy versions galore.

    I’m proud that British workers are screwing together the greatest 4×4 there is. Let’s face it, there isn’t much else to be proud of at the moment!

  26. I would rather have a Land Cruiser any day, after all it was the 4×4 that just about destroyed Landie sales in Australia

  27. @39

    That maybe, however they do not drive anywhere as well as a RR and considering a Land Cruiser (in the UK) will spend the majority of its life on the road handling is important. I followed a 62 plate one over or local twisty moor road and it was all over the place. Interior quality is not up to a RR nor is its performance, even the V8 isn’t that good, nor the newer V6 both are quite slow and fuel consumption not really any better than a V8 RR. They may have a better reputation for reliability, but they are a poor imitation of the RR.

  28. @39 Yorkie, that was then, this is now. You can’t compare the days of British Leyland with what Land Rover/Range rover is producing now.

  29. Sod the car, I’d love to drive off from an empty street, drive through a city with no other cars and have a mountain pass all to myself.

    That’s the only problem with a vehicle like a Range Rover, you still get stuck in a traffic jam the same as everyone else, except it costs you more!

  30. I have mixed feelings — this is a big, bloated, fat car no matter how you dress it up. However, if people are gonna buy big, bloated, fat cars then this is the one to go for; at least it’s British built.

  31. You can hose out the new Range Rover, or indeed any car you like. Might not be good for the electrics though.

    I think the Italian mafia were hiding inside those bales of hay, that’s why he drove round the cliff face.

    Nowadays there are so many sleeping policemen, it’s not much fun in a ZT. A Range Rover is more suited to this modern menace and also most crappy B roads.

    The original RR was great, especially in the 1980s. So was the last version and so is this. The 1990s one whipped the competition, but it wasn’t the leap forward of the other three. Another great LR product. Hurray!

  32. I recently had a funny conversation with a new rangey driver, one of my bosses. I get on well with him and he’s a good laugh. I said his new car was lovely, but I’d feel like people would look up at me and think I was a k–b. His reply was, people who drive these look down on others and think that they are k–bs.

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