Five Things We Love (and One We Hate) About the 2023 Range Rover LWB
Is the Range Rover the ultimate grand tourer? Here’s what you need to know.
Designed for high-speed, high-comfort travel, grand tourers (GTs) have traditionally been viewed almost exclusively as sleek, expensive, luxury sport coupes. Think of the Bentley Continental, BMW 8 Series, or Mercedes-AMG SL. However, a week spent piloting a new Land Rover Range Rover —apologies— Range RoverSE LWB up and down the East Coast convinced us this big, three-row super-luxe SUV may just be a better GT than just about any continental-cruising coupe. Here's why.
It’s Never Out of Place
Californians love to brag about being able to surf the morning and go skiing in the afternoon , but the East Coast is remarkably diverse, too. Over the course of a week and 800 miles in the long-wheelbase 2023 Range Rover, we explored Brooklyn, New York, drove south through the Atlantic Coast's sleepy beach towns, explored Washington, D.C. 's sprawling suburbs, and spent some time in the woods, mountains, and colonial villages of the Hudson Valley. What most surprised us is how no matter what we threw at it—tight New York City streets, hellacious rain, country back roads, and even a little off-roading—the Range Rover, like a good pair of jeans (and all great GTs), is never out of place.
Stupid Maneuverability
One of the design directives for the fifth-generation Range Rover was for it to be able to navigate London's famously narrow streets. To accomplish that task while also increasing the vehicle's size, Land Rover engineers for the first time fit it with four-wheel steering. It paid off. Despite a wheelbase stretching to 126-inches (about a half-foot longer than a Chevrolet Tahoe's ), the Range Rover LWB is shockingly maneuverable. We were amazed by how easy it was to squeeze into small Brooklyn parallel-parking spots and to thread narrow gaps between hordes of e-bikes and scaffolding. While it can't " crab walk" like a GMC Hummer EV , the 2023 Range Rover also paid dividends off-roading on narrow dirt trails in New York's Catskill Mountains, making it easy to place and drive.
Sure Footed
Speaking of, Land Rover's full-time four-wheel-drive system remains tremendously capable, even when it's packaged in this super-luxe package. All great GTs are planted and confidence-inspiring, and the 2023 Range Rover is that and more. On pavement, the four-wheel-drive system mostly disappears into the background, though we did notice its helping hand when a summer storm dumped about 2 inches of standing water onto I-95 somewhere between Philadelphia and Dover, Delaware. It also helps off-road, ensuring the Range Rover's oversized 23-inch wheels and street tires have the traction needed to maintain forward progress. We'd love to see a traditional GT do that.
Smooth Sailing
The wonderful thing about GTs is how multifaceted they can be. The best are supremely comfortable when cruising the highway, and yet poised and confidence-inspiring when driven in a sporting manner on a winding back road. Despite its size and weight, the long-boy 2023 Range Rover manages to do just that. With air springs, electronic dampers, active anti-roll bars, and stereo cameras that constantly scan the road ahead, the Range Rover does a great job at eliminating body roll on twisty roads and filtering out impacts on all but the worst New York City streets. In fact, one of our passengers thought it did too good of a job, saying after a slog on the New York State Throughway that the lack of impacts was "unnerving" and was starting to make them motion sick.
Beats Walking
If megamansions and luxury yachts are any indication, space is the ultimate luxury, and the long-wheelbase 2023 Range Rover has lots of it. While we didn't need the third row in our seven-seater, the first and second rows were supremely comfortable. On a day trip from Brooklyn to the D.C.-area and back, four adults were able to spread out comfortably in the leather-lined cabin, enjoy seat massages, and blast the Range Rover's exceptional Meridian 3D audio system.
We were also able to haul three adults with a week's worth of luggage each for a wedding, plus what felt like an Amazon Prime van's worth of extra boxes and a random oversized guitar case to upstate New York without impeding passenger room or the driver's visibility out of the rear glass.
Room for Improvement
If there's a chink in the 2023 Range Rover's armor, it's in its advanced driving-assist systems. While we love driving, sometimes it's nice to let the car take over some of the workload. Unfortunately, the Range Rover's lane-keep assist system is just plain uncompetitive in a segment where Cadillacs and Lincolns offer hands-free highway driving . The Range Rover's system not only fights frequent corrections the driver is forced to make, but it's also prone to misreading road conditions and making unneeded steering inputs.
2023 Range Rover Side View
2023 Range Rover Rear View
2023 Range Rover Headlights
2023 Range Rover Rear Three Quarter View
2023 Range Rover Rear Seats
2023 Range Rover Dashboard
2023 Range Rover Passenger Side View
I generally like writing—especially when it’s about cars—but I hate writing about myself. So instead of blathering on about where I was born (New York City, in case you were wondering) or what type of cars I like (all of ’em, as long as it has a certain sense of soul or purpose), I’ll answer the one question I probably get most, right after what’s your favorite car (see above): How’d you get that job? Luck. Well, mostly. Hard work, too. Lots of it. I sort of fell into my major of journalism/mass communication at St. Bonaventure University and generally liked it a lot. In order to complete my degree senior year, we had to spend our last two semesters on some sort of project. Seeing as I loved cars and already spent a good portion of my time reading about cars on sites such as Motor Trend, I opted to create a car blog. I started a Tumblr, came up with a car-related name (The Stig’s American Cousin), signed up for media access on a bunch of manufacturer’s websites, and started writing. I did everything from cover new trim levels to reviewing my friends’ cars. I even wrote a really bad April Fool’s Day post about the next Subaru Impreza WRX being Toyota-Corolla-based. It was fun, and because it was fun, it never felt like work. Sometime after my blog had gotten off the ground, I noticed that Motor Trend was hiring for what’s now our Daily News Team. I sent in my résumé and a link to my blog. I got the job, and two weeks after graduation I made the move from New York to California. I’ve been happily plugging away at a keyboard—and driving some seriously awesome hardware—ever since.
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