Luxury SUVs put to the test

Luxury SUVs are getting more luxurious by the day, something underlined by the new Range Rover Velar. We haven’t always been a fan of this vehicle, particularly with a four-pot diesel engine, but here it comes with a 3.0-litre V6 diesel under the elegant bonnet. AT £70,530 it’s more expensive than the Porsche Cayenne S with its 4.2-litre V8 diesel (£66,767) and notably more expensive than the Audi Q7 3.0 TDI 272 Quattro S line with its 3.0-litre V6 diesel (£56685).

That cheaper Porsche also offers 380bhp against the Velar’s 296bhp, and 627lb ft of torque against 516lb ft. And more cylinders. And more performance.

The idea is that the Velar sits below the Range Rover Sport, yet in this guise it’s actually more expensive than the comparable Sport. But the Velar does at least add in, in this HSE guise, a great deal of kit as standard, everything from Matrix LED headlights to air suspension, memory seats, adaptive digital instruments and a whole lot more.

But if you add all that to the Audi Q7 then you end up with the Audi costing more than the Range Rover, which isn’t a travesty given it’s a big SUV with seven seats and a really premium cabin.

And if you added all that to the Porsche you’d end up with an even bigger price tag. Still, this Velar is seventy large, and that’s quite a bit to swallow.

So we’re going to love the Audi when we step inside. It’s larger than the Velar and everything seems to be built to such an exacting standard it’s faintly astonishing. Nothing grates, looks flimsy or doesn’t seem to fit to the millimetre. It’s astonishing really. But that Teutonic brilliance doesn’t extend to a real feeling of luxury or wellbeing.

For that you need the Velar. It isn’t as spacious but it’s not exactly city car space in the rear. And there’s that indefinable sense of opulence and luxury, and the use of gorgeous materials – like the leather that seems to cover everything – so you end up sighing contentedly.

You might sigh in the Cayenne cabin but it might not be from contentment. It looks fine, but it also looks dated now. Just look at all the buttons and switches everywhere. And there’s some vibration from the V8 diesel too, coming in through the controls. And yet.

And yet if you want a really dramatic driver’s car as a luxury SUV then this is it. It’s harder work, rougher, more demanding than some others and that ought to count against it. Oddly it doesn’t – normal rules have never applied to this SUV. And oh boy is it quick if you plant the pedal.

The Velar can’t match that, and it certainly can’t match that luscious torque figure, but the Range Rover has a more relaxed feel to it, less belligerent, more composed and quiet and smooth. The auto transmission makes the most of what is there, and your progress is rapid, smooth and enormously accomplished.

You just glide over the road, courtesy of the active air suspension, whereas in the Cayenne you have to wrestle it a bit more, while dealing with a ride that’s never really totally settled, like it is in the Velar virtually all the time.

The Audi Q7 had steel springs, so it isn’t fair to directly compare it to the others, but the sense is that, even with every addition known to the Audi extras catalogue, you still wouldn’t have a ride that matched the Range Rover’s. As for the rest of the vehicle it’s almost like it tries to be anonymous against the belligerent Porsche and the suave and silky Velar. It’s very refined and composed, but it somehow doesn’t rise to the heights of the Velar, nor deliver the sort of craziness that the Porsche prefers.