Bordeau is an unusual name for a Land Rover. Or for anything, really. At first glance, if you know anything at all about French geography (or wine), you might think it sounds like it’s missing the X-factor. Actually, it’s probably safe to say that noone’s missing the X Factor.

Anyway, as it turns out Bordeau is still a word, even when it doesn’t have an X on the end of it. It’s a type of leather, a species of sage that gardeners get excited about, the name of a company that makes rilettes and other healthy French delicacies and, on a slightly less exotic level, a surname. The 24,665th most common surname in America, in fact, which is something I already knew and in no way did I Google it.

First manufactured in 1988 and now manufactured again in 2025. That’s because Project Bordeau the latest piece of work to emerge from Legacy Overland, a company that doesn’t just tart up old 4x4s – it remakes them from scratch, bringing them up to today’s standards as it goes and adding whatever luxuries and amenities its customers want. These are, needless to say, vehicles that are built to order.

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We tested the petrol engined Jeep Avenger a few months ago – and to our surprise we didn’t like it very much.
There wasn’t a great deal about it to dislike (though we were horrified to find that the bodywork in the engine compartment hadn’t been fully painted) but very little to get excited about. Our conclusion was that the
EV version is better.

Here, we’re taking a quick look back at why. The Avenger was initially launched here as a 4×2 EV, with the aforementioned petrol model coming along later – in addition to an e-Hybrid and the all-wheel drive plug-in 4xe.

List prices start at £26,050 (petrol), £27,050 (e-Hybrid), £29,999 (EV) and £31,219 (4xe). So the EV is not bustingly expensive as EVs go, even when you climb the range (there are three models, with the top Summit model giving you the full works for £33,999).

It has 156bhp and 192lbf.ft, it’ll go from 20%-80% in less than 30 minutes with a fast charger and it’ll cover up to 248 miles on a brimmed battery. And. overall, the Avenger has been responsible for something like a tripling of Jeep’s sales in the UK, so whether you prefer to plug in or fill up it’s clearly doing great things as a vehicle.

Now, we know that the bulk of the people who choose vehicles do so based on things like its looks, cabin, media system, brand name and whether you can get it in a nice colour. Jeep certainly ticks the brand name box and the Avenger collects all the others, too.

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Kia was Britain’s fourth biggest car brand when it launched the EV9 a year and a half ago. Now it’s the
third biggest, having registered 62,005 new vehicles in the first half of 2025 – with just over half of them being either
HEVs, PHEVs or full EVs.

Volumes like that come from everyday vehicles like the Sportage (Britain’s second highest selling car of any kind), Picanto (up 35% on the same time last year) and EV3 (more UK retail sales than any other EV). But Kia’s halo model is doing very nicely too.

As we’ve said before, the EV9 is a statement vehicle for Kia. It’s a properly premium SUV with exceptional equipment
and build quality – and in the GT-Line S AWD 6-seat form tested here, it retails at £77,035. That’s at the bottom end of BMW X5 and Merc GLE money and mid-range for a Land Rover Discovery or Lexus RX, which instantly makes it look like pretty strong value – particularly as it’s getting you an EV (which, like them or not, still cost more up front than the petrol or diesel equivalent).

It’s still quite a sum for a Kia, however, especially to those of us old enough to remember the brand’s fi rst decade or so of selling el cheapo snoozemobiles like the Clarus and Magentis.

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The SV Bespoke commissioning service, which allows Land Rover’s wealthiest clients to have their vehicles built to a
specification unfettered by the boundaries of cost or taste, has been extended to include the Range Rover Sport. Previously available only on the Range Rover itself, the service creates one-of-one editions by offering a massively extended range of design options.

These include up to 230 gloss, matte and satin paint finishes, 1500 interior combination with 15 different main
colours and various ‘exquisite design details’ including unique wheels, veneers, kick plates and seat embroidery as
well as hand-forged two-piece precious metal script badging.

If all that isn’t enough, there’s also a match-to-sample paint service for clients who ‘wish to truly express themselves.’
Or just want a car that’s exactly the same colour as their favourite pants.

In addition, every Range Rover Sport ordered (Land Rover says ‘crafted’, which may be less pretentious than ‘curated’
but is still apt to make you sneer) with Bespoke gloss paint also gets a new ‘glass-like’ gloss fi nish. This is created
using and a custom flatting and polishing process along with a thicker top-coat lacquer – sounds like they’ve borrowed a technique from the world of hot rods there, and those are probably the best presented cars in existence so that’s no bad thing.

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You might have thought the Octa was already the ultimate version of the Defender. But now here’s the Octa Black, ‘combining extreme all-terrain performance with an even bolder appearance.’

Powered by the familiar 635bhp twin-turbo V8 engine, like every Octa this comes with 6D Dynamics suspension
and a special Octa setting in its drive mode palette. What sets it apart is the use of either gloss or satin black on as
many as 30 different exterior elements, to go with the Narvik Black paint that comes as standard.

Said elements include the front undershield and rear scuff plates, which are finished in satin black powder coat,
the satin black recovery eyes and the gloss black quad exhaust tips. Even the traditionally green Land Rover oval on
the grille is black with darkened silver script, while the silencer and centre box covers and optional towbar (electrically
deployable, natch) have a gloss or satin black finish.

The brake calipers? Black, with silver script. The wheels in front of them? A choice of 20” forged alloys or 22” gloss
black jobs, with black centre caps and dark grey Defender script.

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