New York 2009: 2010 Land Rover Range Rover

Land Rover has been rolling out a lot of significant debuts at the New York International Auto Show, including significantly revised versions of the Range Rover, Range Rover Sport and the LR4 (renamed replacement for the LR3). The most significant is the line-topping Range Rover.

The Land Rover Range Rover is oh-so-important to the company right now. Shockingly, the Range Rover's sales have been holding up the best in comparison to it's lesser siblings. That's an impressive feat and something I'm sure Land Rover is taking note of. I'm sure the margins are quite nice on this!

The exterior design has been subtly updated, with more modern detailing the headlights and taillights, and a flatter, more aerodynamic front fascia. It's a refresh, to keep it updated. The Range Rover and Rolls-Royce have a lot of similarities in the sense that; what's the reason for a huge change? As long as they're kept updated to be modern with the times, that's good enough. The same underlying reasons to purchase always exist.

The BMW-developed basis is just as excellent today as when it debuted back in 2003. Land Rover has done a good job of keeping it updated through these years.

Definitely the Rolls-Royce of the SUV world. Both British brand and BMW developed too. Ironic huh? Throw Aston Martin in the mix (who was formerly paired with Land Rover), trying to develop a Lagonda SUV that would be similar to the Range Rover, and you get an idea of how incredibly complicated the automotive world really is.

If there's one theme that you can see evident throughout the Land Rover Range Rover, it's the number three. It's part of a new theme called "Three Stripe". Three grille lines, three section fender vents, "three-stripe" headlight turn signals and LED taillights with a "three-stripe" design as well. I like the attention to detail exhibited in these changes. Very nice, Land Rover!

The inside on the other hand gets some very significant upgrades. I believe the interior has gone pretty much unchanged since the debut. No more! The new Range Rover features a new, hard-drive based GPS navigation system, redesigned upper dash area, leather headliner and updated steering wheel controls/switchgear. Perhaps most significant of all is a new 12-inch Thin Film Transistor (TFT) screen in place of the traditional, physical gauges.

The screen is customizable to show different driver settings in the middle area, as well as off-road information like steering angle, wheel articulation, suspension settings and Terrain Response™ settings.

The new touchscreen navigation screen is sunken in above a new panel that adds another layer of vents. It almost looks capable of closing in over the screen, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Navigation system menus have been redesigned for easier touchscreen navigation, and a new system called Surround Camera uses 5 digital cameras to relay a nearly 360-view of the vehicle to the screen.

Big news comes under the hood as well. The base architecture for the "LR-V8" engines have been co-developed with Jaguar and they offer increased power and efficiency. The two engine options are a 5.0-liter, naturally aspirated V-8 making 375 horsepower and an 5.0-liter supercharged V-8 making 510 horsepower (!). The base model for 2010 hits 0-60 in nearly the same time as last year's supercharged (7.1 2009 vs. 7.2 2010).

The supercharged engine on the other hand shaves 1.2 seconds off of the time for an incredible 5.9 seconds! Wow, a huge mass of vehicle like this moving at that speed must be a sight to be hold. Bigger displacement and more powerful, yet the new engine results in improved fuel-efficiency of 7.3 percent and reduced emissions by 7.4 percent.

The Land Rover Range Rover, or right now at least, is the pinnacle of the SUV world and a true feat of engineering. Good job Land Rover, the Range Rover should see success for many more years to come!