WHEN we announced the Porsche Macan as one of The Weekend Australian’s best cars of 2014 there was a tsunami of emails from readers in Hawthorn, Mosman, Hamilton and Peppermint Grove asking how we could have ignored that favoured Double Bay tractor, the Range Rover.
We said: “The Porsche Macan S ($100,000) is the answer to the perennial South Yarra cowboy/girl dilemma. You want an SUV that fits Luca, Jayden and Willow and their ski gear, but you don’t want to look like just another private-school bus driver. The Macan is a Cayenne that’s shrunk in the German wash. It can actually go off piste, handles like a dream and has the right badge on the bonnet.”
Malcolm T from Bellevue Hill wrote: “How could you ignore that peerless epitome of British style the Range Rover? Even the Queen herself drives one.”
Well Malcolm, Betty Windsor is actually something of a petrol head. She has around 14 cars including two Bentleys, three Rollers, three Daimlers, some VWs, Range Rovers, Land Rovers and is qualified to work on truck engines. As she often used to say “the aristocracy buy Daimlers, the nouveau riche buy Rolls-Royce”.
Delicious as it is to contemplate Betty having stuck with traditional British marques, Bentley and Rolls-Royce are of course owned by the Germans, Daimler and Range Rover by the Indians.
Interestingly, early last year she sold one of her Land Rover Discoverys after someone (no finger pointing at Harry) rolled it on the farm. After a rebuild it sold for nearly $60,000 (you can pick up one from a non-royal locally for $10,000). In a weird coincidence the very first Range Rover also sold last year for $250,000 ($3000 for a non-first produced locally).
Before you rush out and spend your Xmas money on an early Range Rover, read theDog and Lemon Guide. In a quick summary editor Clive Matthew-Wilson says the SUV is “as solid and British as a manor house and just as expensive to maintain … It used to be said that there were only two man-made structures visible from space, the Great Wall of China and the gaps between the panels on a Range Rover. A politician is dependable compared to the average Range Rover.”
Click here to read on http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/range-rover-the-double-bay-tractor-still-has-its-place/story-e6frg6n6-1227171988688
