There was a time when Subaru was just about the sexiest car brand in the world. It was a time of Richard
Burns and Colin McRae, of the SVX coupe showing Beemer lads what cool looked like and countless hot Imprezas
showing wide boys in Porsches and Ferraris what fast looked like.

But it was also a time of cool wagons. The Legacy and Forester were born from everyday cars but they had all-wheel drive and, oh God yes, low range. Low range! To know them was to love them. The Legacy spawned the Outback and it also became available, for all too short a time, with a glorious quad-cam turbo engine that turned it into one of the all-time great street sleepers. Subaru was riding the crest of a wave – its cars were so sexy, they even made practicality look cool.

Somewhere along the line, the fun factor disappeared. Subaru is no longer a brand young lads aspire to being seen in. But it still pretty much defined the crossover estate market, which has seen many other names come and go – and to know it is still to love it. The Outback and Forester are hugely popular among country dwellers, and once you’ve owned one you tend never to want anything else.

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What goes ZJ, WG, WK, WK2, WL? That’s a sequence with no apparent rhyme or reason,
to be sure; but if you know your Jeeps, you’ll recognise it as the five generations of Grand Cherokee.

You used to see loads of them on the road, but then the financial crash happened, the market caught a cold over big, traditional 4x4s and though there’s been a whole model cycle since then, the Grand has never recovered its old position as an up-for-it allrounder for the working man, with not much subtlety but swathes of leather, lots of kit
and a price real people could afford.

Cars like that don’t make big margins, and with the numbers taking an inevitable hit there was only one way for the Grand to stay profitable. So upmarket she goes. See also Land Rover Defender, Toyota Land Cruiser and Ineos Grenadier. The Grenadier was going to cost thirty-five grand, they said.

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What comes into your mind when you think of the Cotswolds? A traditional agricultural landscape of rolling hills and authentic villages of honey-coloured local sandstone, perhaps? A much loved escape from the city whose aesthetics border on perfection? A community lain waste by floods of pernicious money from outside? Farmhouses priced far beyond the means of farmers and now occupied, occasionally, by millionaires from London and abroad?

Behold the Range Rover SV Burford Edition which, ‘whether in the city or the idyllic Cotswolds landscape… represents the pinnacle of Range Rover personalisation.’ It’s based on the SV P615 V8 Long Wheelbase model and is limited to just 10 units, all of them offered exclusively in the UK to existing Range Rover Autobiography and SV owners.

Burford was chosen for the vehicle’s name because it’d known as the gateway to the Cotswolds and because it’s ‘synonymous with luxury rural lifestyle’ (and shop workers who have to travel in from Gloucester and Swindon every day to serve said luxury rural lifestyle, most of them presumably not in Range Rovers).

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Get ready for the Defender equivalent of the Range Rover Sport SV. Called Octa, it will go on sale later this year powered by the SV’s twin-turbocharged 4.4-litre V8 and likely to be priced close to £200,000.

‘Original British adventure brand Defender will introduce a new high-performance, all-terrain hero in 2024,’ says
Land Rover. Actually it’s not Land Rover saying it any more, is it, because Land Rover is just a ‘trust mark’ now. But then
Defender isn’t just a car, it’s an ‘adventure brand,’ so that’s alright.

The same engine puts out 625bhp and 590lbf.ft in the Range Rover Sport SV, allowing it to dismantle the 0-62 sprint in a disarmingly cheerful 3.8 seconds. It might be expected to be down-tuned for use in the Defender – though as the two vehicles are now from completely different ‘manufacturers’ within JLR’s still fabulously pompous sounding House of Brands, why should it be?

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Elsewhere in this issue you’ll see that Toyota is moving the Land Cruiser a bit more towards its roots, but away from people who’d like to be able to afford one. The Japanese company is aware it needs to be careful since the heritage goes back to the first 20 Series of the 1950s. And here’s Mercedes making a lot of noise about its latest G-Wagen, which was first produced in 1979, when the Land Cruiser was already about 20 years old.

It’s not the only difference between the two either. Toyota may be going back to basics, but Mercedes is straight out of the box boasting of its ‘transparent bonnet’, digital user experience and electrification. It’s a long way from something for German soldiers to move around in.

Although they weren’t the first military to use the G-Wagen. We know this, he says slightly smugly, because the Argentinian army got them first and had them in 1981. When we captured one, hmmm, can’t remember where now, but it was an island with a lot of penguins.

Read the full article in the June issue of Overlander 4×4 https://shop.assignmentmedia.co.uk/issue/4×4202406