Range Rover SE: A six-figure SUV that still lacks some refinement.

The glove box is sublime.

Two of them, in fact: upper and lower.

Both open–gracefully, even majestically–with the touch of a button.

Inside both glove boxes, deep felt lines every surface, including the hinges.

Total luxury.

Black like the cosmos, soft like puppy dog ears.

And toward the end of our week with the Range Rover SE, the top glove box stopped deploying. The catch would release with a click, yet the lid would not fall unless coaxed by your hand, which, let’s admit, is not the purpose of buying a vehicle that starts at $117,200.

Sadness.

The 2025 Range Rover SE Long Wheelbase Seven Seats model that we tested is fancy–way fancy.

And it’s fast–way fast.

But the latest Range Rover is also a bit of an acquired taste.

For one, no buttons, no knobs. Do we call it an inconvenience or a textbook example of elegance in simplicity?

The center stack and console? Totally smooth aside from a shifter and a lone button that turns the engine on and off.

You want more a/c? Open the screen.

Seats warmer or colder? The screen.

Radio volume up or down? The screen.

Navigation? The screen.

And pretty much anything else–aside from moving the seat up, down, forward or back–is controlled via the screen. Remember how VW got hell when it removed the volume knob?

Behind the wheel? First you gotta climb up. The Range Rover might not look that big, but at 207 inches long and 73 inches tall, it’s about the size of a new Tahoe.

Supportive seats and a meaty yet unique steering wheel. With two spokes running parallel from the hub, it’s almost like a modern interpretation of the one found in a Porsche 944.

The console shifter looks traditional, but it’s your standard modern unit: Rock forward for reverse and back for drive. Click it back a second time for the sport mode. (You want to do that.)

Steering feels a little lighter than expected and desired, though. I’m guessing there’s a bit of assist present to manage those giant Pirellis–285/45R22 Scorpion Zeros–yet I’d like to see it dialed back a tad to provide a little more feel.

Ours had the V8. That option bumps the starting figure to $143,200.

It is smooth, though. Wicked smooth. No runs, no drips, no errors. The twin-turbo, 4.4-liter V8 makes 530PS–sorry, no horsepower numbers on the Range Rover site–and just pulls and pulls. Its maker claims a zero-to-60 time of 4.6 seconds.

More impressive: can’t really feel the eight-speed automatic transmission shift. It just goes. The whole driveline, in fact, feels electric.

Once moving, the entire experience is one of opulence: extremely quiet and with all of the comforts and conveniences. Our tester even had a fridge in the center console. I put some film for my camera in there.

The second row of seats offers an airy experience with full controls for tunes and comfort.

The left-rear seat, though, didn’t want to return to position after I went to explore the third row. It would move up just fine–power assisted, of course–but didn’t want to fully retreat as instructed.

To provide access to the third row, the two middle seats move forward and backward in two steps. When asked to make that final move rearward, the one on the left just stopped. I tried the button a few times and eventually got the seat into its proper locked position.

Try it again to see if it was operator error? Oh, great, now the seat is moving forward when asked to move backward. Once I got the seat fully retracted, I cut my losses.

The power-assisted, two-piece tailgate, likewise, didn’t always want to cooperate. When asked to close as a pair, the rear tailgate reversed direction just before reaching its final destination–as if something were in the way.

So I checked it out. The filler panel looked undone.

My solution: Close the lower tailgate first and then the upper one.

For the record, the two-piece hatch on my ’92 Civic Si never gave me such issues.

We didn’t get a window sticker for this one, but it’s easily a $150,000 vehicle. I just built one that touches $200,000.

For 2025, J.D. Power lists Range Rover fifth from the bottom, beating Audi, Jeep, Chrysler and Volkswagen for those honors. Finishing above Range Rover by one place but not an insignificant number of points? Mitsubishi.

I get that the Range Rover delivers exclusivity, luxury and the ability to mix and match all manner of options, but are you getting a relaxing, trouble-free experience?

Comments

Displaying 1-10 of 22 commentsView all comments on the GRM forums

You'll need to log in to post.