Land Rover Range Rover

Press the accelerator flat to the floor and nothing lurches, nothing shouts. The V8 gathers itself low and unhurried, the automatic gearbox drops a gear with barely a murmur, and two and a half tonnes of British steel and leather simply settle deeper into the road and go. There is no drama in it — only the quiet, absolute confidence of a machine that has never needed to prove anything to anyone. This is the whole point of a Range Rover: command without commotion.

Inside, five seats of the softest hide in the business face a cabin so hushed you notice the air conditioning before you notice the engine. The automatic transmission never announces itself; it simply anticipates, shifting a half-beat before you'd ask it to, so the whole experience reads as one long, even exhale rather than a series of inputs and responses.

Petrol power gives it the effortless, always-there reserve that diesel never quite manages — press deeper and more arrives, calmly, as if it had been waiting. You do not drive a Range Rover so much as you settle into it and let the road sort itself out below. Arrival, not velocity, is the entire point, and this car has understood that longer than almost anything else on sale.

Also known as: Range Rover Vogue, Vogue.