Land Rover Experience Driving School
I have never encountered a Range Rover on a mountain trail. Yet I've driven one of these 80-grand sport-utes to the summit of Colorado's 14,000-foot Argentine Pass. The upper portion of the trail is hacked out of the mountainside. Too narrow for more than one vehicle, it's boulder-strewn, crossed by rushing water from the melting snowpack and marked by thousand-foot dropoffs. I reached the summit without once bottoming out or losing traction.
While less expensive Land Rover models may be a somewhat less uncommon sight off-road, the upscale Range Rover is almost universally encountered on paved roads, not fording some river in a remote wilderness. Not surprisingly, hardly anyone seems to be aware of the Range Rover's extensive array of high-tech off-pavement gear and its phenomenal off-road abilities.
For example, standard equipment on the least expensive model, the Sport, includes full-time AWD, an electronically-controlled two-speed transfer case which, coupled with the ZF six-speed manumatic, gives a useful 12.22:1 overall gearing in low range. The center diff is an electronically-controlled locker; a mechanical locker is optional for the rear. It will scamper up a 45-degree incline and it can ford a 27-inch-deep river without getting your Guccis damp.
But even those with no interest in communing with Rocky Mountain sheep nearly three miles above sea level can sample a Land Rover's true capabilitiesmdash;and enjoy a rather nice catered lunch in the process. The company offers Land Rover Experience off-road driving schools at select locations in the U.S. and Canada. Courses can be tailored to last from an hour or two up to half a day or longer.
I attended a six-hour course at the school headquartered on the grounds of the Biltmore Estate near Ashville, North Carolina. George Vanderbilt's estate encompassed 195 square miles at the time it was completed in 1895. Today it's been trimmed to a mere 8,000 acres, roughly 12.5 square miles. But the house is still the same, all 250 rooms of it. This includes 35 bedrooms and 43 bathrooms. It's the largest home ever constructed in this country.
The school's off-road course is comprised of a variety of purpose-built sites, off-limits to other traffic. They're scattered about the grounds and linked by the estate's 100 miles of red-dirt roads, much of it covered by a lush canopy of towering oaks that look old enough to have been there long before Daniel Boone first trudged through.
Most students book rooms at the adjacent four-star Biltmore Estate Hotel and our class—two of us—was met at the hotel front door at a very civilized 9 a.m. by Lead Instructor Greg Nikolas, an ex-Army off-road specialist, and Catherine Lemieux, whose Quebecois-accented English hints at her Canadian heritage.
Each student was given his own vehicle, a normally-aspirated, 4.4-liter, 300 hp Range Rover. It seemed a bit surreal to be going off-road in a vehicle costing over 75 large but the Land Rover instructors seemed unconcerned about potential mishaps.
Threading our way through the dense woods, presently we arrived at our first challenge. In a grassy field still cloaked with tendrils of dense overnight fog lay a pair of 100-foot-long water-filled ruts. They were carved into the area's trademark red clay, a substance that, when wet, offers the traction coefficient of melting ice.
With the water depth unknown, instructor Lemieux suggested that an increase in ground clearance might be prudent. The Rover's electronic air spring suspension lowers at high speed to improve handling and aerodynamics. It also adjusts roll stiffness in near-realtime to dramatically limit body roll. For off-road work, it can be manually raised by a console switch, increasing ground clearance from 8.9 to as high as 11.2 inches.
Lemieux also recommended giving the Range Rover's unique Terrain Response system a workout. This clever system automatically adjusts to suit the terrain, altering the vehicle's four-wheel traction control, throttle tip-in, locking of center and rear diffs and the off-road calibration mapping of the ABS. A rotary dial on the console can dial up General Driving, Grass/gravel/snow, Sand, Mud and Ruts and Rock crawl. This occasion called for the Mud and Ruts setting, Lemieux advised.
With Terrain Response set and vehicle fully raised, I gently eased into the trenches, waded through and climbed out at the far end without drama, never spinning a wheel. This was particularly noteworthy in light of the fact that our school car was shod with the stock 255/55ZR-19 all-season tires.
After pausing for a gourmet picnic lunch, I swapped vehicles with the other student. This one was a Sport Supercharged. Based on the LR2 platform, the Sport is 8 inches shorter in wheelbase and overall length than the big Range Rover and is shorter by 4 inches less in overall height. The Supercharged variant has a 4.2-liter DOHC, 32-valve alloy V-8 topped with an intercooled Eaton supercharger, good for 400 hp. For the record, this one was also wearing standard-issue tires and wheels, 275/40ZR20 Pirellis on 9.5-inch alloys.
The tire issue bears an explanation. Look at any serious off-road vehicle and you'll see tires with knobby treads. They're great off-road, not so great on-road. The squirming of those big tread lugs and their tall sidewalls generally give the vehicle all the directional stability of a giraffe walking on marbles. That's why most manufacturers cheat and swap the stock footwear for off-road rubber before inviting journalists to ride-and-drive media events where their vehicles will venture very far off road. Range Rover doesn't. I asked chief instructor Nikolas about this.
"Our objective is to show owners the capabilities of their stock vehicles," he said. "And in stock trim they have far more capability than most will ever need." Okay, we'd have to find out.
As the day went on, the courses got progressively tougher. Most memorable was Hornet's Loop, tucked away in a dense forest. It's an obstacle course where we traversed deep craters, inched our way over fallen tree trunks and eventually reached Table Rock. The summit of this man-made mountain is reached over a trail pointed skyward at a 45-degree angle and constructed entirely of beach ball-sized boulders and moss-covered logs. This goat path couldn't have been much more than a foot wider than my Range Rover. It looked like I was being asked to drive up a ski jump.
No worries, instructor Lemieux assured me. "Just keep the wheels straight once you're on the trail and go easy on the gas," she advised. "But remember, light on the gas; you really don't want to break traction here." No kidding. A sudden burst of power could very likely see the vehicle side-stepping right over the edge of the trail and onto its roof. I wondered idly how much it costs to repair the mostly aluminum bodywork of an overturned Range Rover.
We could forget about eyeballing this one for ourselves. Off-roaders routinely have spotters to act as their eyes on trails like this. After selecting the Rock Crawl setting on the Terrain Response system I rolled the windows down, the better to hear a spinning tire. My instructor dismounted and clambered to a spot high enough on the trail that I could see her hand signals.
Following instructions, I flipped the console shifter into its manual gate and into first gear. Then I began inching uphill, attention focused entirely on instructor Lemieux. Adding just enough revs to keep the wheels turning, the Range Rover gently rocked first to one side, then the other as it resolutely crawled over the obstacles. Do try not to roll the pretty Range Rover, I reminded myself. More thumps and thuds, then with a final prod of the accelerator I reached the summit and dropped onto the flat surface. The arrival was almost anticlimactic. My contribution was little more than minor steering corrections and some restraint with the throttle. The vehicle did all the work.
And that's the message most will depart with. No matter how awful the road conditions, the Range Rover will get you to your destination without breaking a sweat. Same thing if you decide to drive up a ski jump. A pity the average owner will remain clueless to this posh vehicle's off-road ability. But a stint at the Land Rover Experience at least will show them what's possible, even if it's the only time they'll ever risk dropping one onto its head.
