For most of the North London beret and brioche set, saving the whales remains very much a five day a week concern. Let’s face it; come Friday evening, the only Wales on the collective radar is the one hosting the weekend cottage, the only serious consideration joining the M4’s camelhair coat caravanserai in the appropriate degree of style and at sufficient velocity to prevent those goujons of sea horse from thawing before the Aga’s up to temperature.
Taking muddy track dismissal, a Bad Smell Under The Nose Driving Position and a price tag offering little or no change from £50,000 as a given, then, these six SUVs squirt us straight into the heady realms of brand prejudice and badge snobbery. You just know it isn’t their comfort, capaciousness or capabilities, so much as how they make you feel, that inevitably adjudicates.
Or, to put it another way, here are six cars for contemplation by those who can’t quite afford a full-fat Range Rover.
Given that all but one of these two tonne plus mastodons share the fuel-efficient credentials of a potentially underwhelming 3.0 litre turbodiesel powerplant allied to permanent four-wheel drive, this is surprisingly diverse bunch. Each even boasts a USP of sorts…
Audi’s Q7 3.0 TDI Clean Diesel S line is the only one here with seven seats; the Range Rover Sport 3.0 TDV6 HSE is the only one with proper, shave-your-legs, look over-walls, tease-people, off-road credentials; the Mercedes ML 350 CDI BlueEFFICIENCY Sport represents the global best seller in this segment; despite being spawned in the only country still prone to scoffing whales, the Lexus RX 450h SE-L exudes the strongest eco-weeny credentials; pre-Panamera, the Cayenne Diesel was the only Porsche with more than two adult seats; and BMW’s X6 xDrive 30d is, erm… currently outselling the X5 in Italy.
Fifteen slightly fighty minutes as the cars first gather reveal that even the good offices of Car magazine are not immune from said brand prejudice. The air heavy with veiled threats of anaesthetic-free vasectomy if it wins (ha, too late), the Q7 is under fire from the off.
But what’s not to enjoy? Granted, this vast machine is marred by the ubiquitous Audi Big Grille – the face of an inflatable doll wearing chrome lipstick – and will never truly look the part until an 88mm gun turret completes the standard equipment specification. But it does exactly what it says on the tin, and has a classy, superbly screwed together, ergonomically excellent cabin which ably demonstrates why Audi remains the industry yardstick for interior design. A colleague professes himself bored with Audis… Surely the sentiment of one prone to, say, playing away when his toothbrush already shares the bathroom beaker with that of a Norwegian lingerie model. Frankly, implausible.
The Lexus RX 450h is an interesting addition. Its hybrid powertrain posits the power of a 4.5 litre unit combined with fuel efficiency and emissions on a par with the rest of the group. But, perhaps more significantly in this gathering, it highlights the impossibility of joining a posh private members club without the requisite eons of languishing on the waiting list. Clearly, the Americans are less sniffy about such matters. From a UK perspective, however, one can only hazard a guess as to how much longer Lexus must loiter on the sidelines before the sword of brand approbation finally bounces on the shoulders of sheer technical achievement.
Still trailing this field in pedigree and badge status, then, the Lexus hybrid has been subjected to a rigorous, mind- if not heart-warming makeover. From first contact it’s apparent that the RX 450h is even more beautifully made than the Q7. Windows that slow with the majesty of a docking Blue Riband liner as they reach the limit of travel; a cupholder lid oozing oleaginous damping perfection; ballerina-graceful, double-hinged grab handles over the doors; a sound system that’ll blow the wax out of your ears without a whiff of distortion… Nothing has been left unscrutinised by its inscrutable creators.
Conversely, whilst its predecessor posed quite prettily, I’m not altogether convinced by new couture which features the nose of one apparently dragged reluctantly onto the field of play by a pair of rat-nosed pliers.
How Lexus must envy the likes of Porsche, Mercedes and Land Rover, where evidence that little more than modest tinkering will keep the brand-happy customer satisfied is rife. Signs of mere fiddling whilst the cottage in Bwlch burns are most apparent in the two former contenders
Despite a mild remodelling, Porsche’s Cayenne remains a frog in desperate need of a good snog from a princess. The interior, meanwhile, has dated surprisingly quickly and the chunky, inelegantly detailed undercarriage control switches seem of somewhat Fischer Price quality.
Facelifted over a year ago now, Mercedes’ evergreen M-Class is here presented in Sport guise, which affords it a grille modelled on the blades of a shopping channel kitchen appliance and, in the absence of half a dozen Keystone Kops, utterly pointless running boards. You never step on them on the way in or out. Efforts to clear them and avoid smearing most of Mudfordshire over the backs of your legs inevitably lead to a disembarkation technique involving all the dignity of a pantomime horse toppling into an orchestra pit.
Now, I confess to approaching the Range Rover Sport with all the wary suspicion of a dog reacquainting itself with an electrified lamp post. Something of a mongrel, disguising Discovery underpinnings beneath gently brash detailing and marketing-lie badging, this car has always struck me as achieving little but a devaluation of the brand.
Clearly, however, I’m alone here, because the Sport has been so irritatingly successful that it now transpires that Gerry McGovern’s long-awaited, rear seat chiropractor-pleasing LRX is also destined to boast Range Rover badging. At this rate, there’ll soon be nothing left to hallmark the true king of the hill except that point-to-point Bento box ‘n’ gin terrace astern.
Especially since this latest Sport benefits from a spanking new interior which closes the quality gap still further. Some might liken the simplified dashboard to the keyboard of an old military laptop, but all is clear, concise, well made and operable in even the chunkiest Nanook-clubbed gloves. And the M-Class’ thin, wobbling plastic air-conditioning dials could certainly learn a trick or two from the Sport’s chunky, tactile rubberised offerings.
With van Hooydonk now doing the BMW design donkeywork, we Bangle detractors can only hope that the Wisconsin wunderkind’s influence will rapidly fade. Lead times being what they are, however, I shouldn’t be surprised to learn that Bangle signed off the X6 before checking out. With the bows of an upturned clinker-built boat attached to a giant coupe that’s been left on the party balloon pump a tad too long, the X6 viewed in isolation looks positively gargantuan. But, perversely, in this company it seems almost petite and, dare I say it, one of the better looking and more cohesive designs on offer.
For my fifty grand, however, the interior is somewhat lacking in appeal. The instrument binnacle is ludicrously small for a beast of this girth, and the remaining switchgear not consigned to the muddy system-swamp of iDrive is a touch mean and fiddly, leaving the giant spar spanning the dashboard feeling somewhat bland in execution. No coat looks the part without buttons, and I suspect that it’s aesthetics, rather than customer complaints over the complexities of iDrive, that has driven the reintroduction of at least some traditional switchgear to the bigger BMW interior.
Interestingly, so obsessed has the company become with filling even the marketing niches of near pipe-dream that at least two other BMWs would make equally worthy contenders in this field; a 7-seat X5, or, indeed, the new 5-series GT.
Rapid brand identification is paramount to the re-affirmation of status in the Friday evening Severn bridge toll queue, and the increasingly ubiquitous running light running battle continues apace here.
Credit where it’s due, Bangle instigated this tussle with his ingenious, instantly identifiable headlamp halos, somewhat less enthrallingly dubbing them ‘optical wave guides’ which, mercifully, no one else does. Both Audi and Mercedes offer variations on the Cheryl Cole-heavy, LED eye-liner theme, as does a Cayenne Turbo, but strangely, not this Diesel. The Lexus, presumably in the interests of energy efficiency, hasn’t yet signed up. And, in a blatant display of turf war provocation, the Range Rover now apes BMW in a gently low-rent, Accessorize idiom.
There’s little to choose between these six when it comes to getting comfortable behind the wheel. All offer seat and helm adjustment of sufficient breadth to accommodate even the most hastily constructed; the Lexus spoiling the ship with the unpleasant, soap to sandpaper feel of its wood and leather wheel, the Range Rover instigating a powerful perception of added regality through the simple expedient of that inboard armrest.
In performance terms, too, you’ll have to read the stats to identify a clear winner. On paper, the Lexus shades it – a combination of 3.5 litre petrol engine and two electric motors generating 295bhp and the only sub-8.0 second 0-62mph time in the group. Of the five 3.0 litre diesels, BMW’s 235bhp straight-six lunges into second place in eight seconds dead. The Q7 and Cayenne share the same powerplant, Porsche breathing almost imperceptibly on theirs to award it, erm, 3bhp more and shave 0.2 seconds off the 0-62mph dash. With 224bhp, the M-Class is a whisker quicker than the Audi, leaving the 241bhp Range Rover loitering at the back of the pack with a somewhat less than sporting 9.3 second 0-62mph time.
All of which merely reaffirms the largely redundant nature of such bald statistics. Because, with such closely matched performance between this bunch of rather rapid bungalows, what you actually experience is so much more significant than what you are in fact getting: The combined might of combustion and magnetic coil certainly imbues the relatively lightweight Lexus with a handsome shove off the line. Thereafter, however, it never feels significantly quicker than the diesels, and the CVT gearbox, though supremely efficient at hunting out peak torque and holding it there, does still sound too much like they’re branding heifers under the bonnet.
With the X6 more than holding its own despite a slight shortfall on the torque front, the identically engined Cayenne and Q7 prove pretty much inseparable in a straight line, the only perceptible outcome of Porsche’s engine bay tinkerings being a propensity to clatter at idle like a kid running a stick down a picket fence. So, with the M-Class ostensibly all over it like a cheap suit, it’s actually the on-paper lounge lizard that delivers. Thrumming away with delicious, muted intent, the Range Rover V6’s twin, sequential turbocharging delivers 442lb ft of group-conquering torque, displaying an eagerness to please through the gears that utterly belies the slower start inevitably associated with a 2535kg car.
Every one of these machines is little short of imperious in the cruise, isolating occupants from the maddening crowd with an efficiency that smaller cars can only envy. The Range Rover’s the quietest, the Q7 running it a close second, but let down by road noise from the front undercarriage. The Cayenne’s powerplant is always, perhaps deliberately, a tad vocal, while the Lexus – perversely for the one capable of low speed silent running – generates far more high frequency road noise and vibration than the rest of the pack. Conversely, low frequency intrusions appear to have been all but eliminated, so perhaps there is some truth in the adage that Westerners find high frequencies more aurally disruptive, whilst bass notes cause greater discomfort in the Far East. Hence the quality of the piped music in your local Thai…
Given that what we have here is a small herd of hippos in tutus, it’s a testament to the skills of global automotive engineers, allied, of course, to ubiquitous adaptive damping, that they can make these cars handle at all.
Indeed, with steering that’s actually more communicative than that of either the X6 or Cayenne, there’s more than a whiff of glee to be derived from bunging a car the size of the Audi down a twisting A road. Trouble is, the ride quality is, frankly, terrible. On occasion, the car seems so hell-bent on dislodging the driver from his seat that it feels like trying to remain on a horse with a wasp under its tail.
Boasting super-light steering at all times, the Lexus proves brisk and reasonably well organised, but largely uninvolving. The M-Class, too, lacks poise when pushed. In this company, it feels floaty and imprecise in both steering and ride, rolls the most through corners and, over rougher surfaces, fidgets like a gorilla forced into evening dress for the first time.
The X6, Cayenne and Range Rover all offer a higher order of handling prowess. Allied to over-light yet appropriately accurate steering, the Porsche delivers a surprisingly supple, fluid ride. Up to a point. Thereafter, with roll elimination of primary concern, proceedings can become quite choppy in the manner of a fairground fast jet simulator, but this is still a remarkably engaging drive for such a big machine. The X6 feels less aggressively damped and, though it does still hop about a little on poor surfaces, largely exhibits a more comfortable ride than the Cayenne with barely any perceptible loss of agility.
Sadly, the sand in the Vaseline is the BMW’s steering. No matter that it remains heavy at all times; there’s a good argument for steering weight reflecting the mass of a machine. But it’s absurdly inert for a member of the ‘ultimate driving machine’ clan, offering all the reward of opening a submarine hatch.
All of which leaves the Range Rover as the surprise package here. Despite feeling more softly sprung and damped than the Teutons, it exhibits truly remarkable poise, communicates admirably well through the helm, turns in with absurd alacrity and offers astonishingly high levels of grip.
Ultimately, none of these cars is that much fun to fling around without recourse to the flappy paddles fitted to all but the Lexus. All automatics (save the wonderful new AMG box of the E 63) have the unnerving habit of refusing to downshift without right pedal sponsorship, leaving you lashing disconcertingly into a bend on a
trailing throttle with no engine braking. Worse, all five diesels here take too long to respond to kick-down demands; a bit like stamping on the tail of a brontosaurus and waiting for the other end to go ‘ow’… Manual control of the hoon, then, proves not so much more pleasing as downright essential.
In keeping with real-world conditions, we haven’t subjected this group to the rigours of off-roading. However, past experiences would suggest that the Lexus, Q7 and X6 are the ones sploshing about in the shallow end wearing inflatable arm bands, with the Porsche and Mercedes both venturing further towards the deep end and the Range Rover nonchalantly churning out length after length with all the legendary insouciance for which the brand remains renowned.
Ownership of any of these machines would hardly constitute a chore. Despite a lack of brand status, the technological tour de force that is the Lexus makes an interesting case, boasting 45mpg and wallet-pleasing CO2 levels for company car costings. Then again, the specimen I drove only recorded an average of 29.1mpg, with the M-class running it a very close second, and I’m not sure there are that many RX 450hs hushing around with company car status.
In this company, the Q7’s a given if you need seven seats, and the choice of Porsche or BMW will inevitably come down to badge preference, much as those who favour an M-Class with Sanyo Music Centre III snorting along astern prove consistently hard to prise from their favoured brand.
Not having a spare fifty grand, however, adjudication poses me no such problems. So, turn up the Elgar; I’ll surprise even myself and take the Range Rover Sport, not merely because it’ll always get the job done, no matter the yomp or circumstance, but also because, in this company, it’s the only car which consistently delivers something that none of the others can manage. Quite simply, it makes you feel truly special.