2011 Range Rover returns to its rich heritage

There are people for whom price is no object. They are not necessarily rich. They are in love.

When it comes to certain automotive marques — Jaguar, Land Rover, Rolls-Royce, Aston-Martin — theirs is a love that defies most commonly held views of common sense.

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• 2011 Range Rover returns to its rich heritage
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Yet, their love is not unconditional. It is not a mid-life crisis. It is as deliberate as a pre-nuptial agreement. The object of affection must keep certain promises. It has to bring something to the table.

Consider, for example, the subject of this week’s column, the 2011 Land Rover Range Rover HSE sport-utility vehicle, priced north of $90,000 as equipped for the sample drive.

But, first, an aside: Jaguar and Land Rover are now owned by Tata Motors, a part of the Tata Group, India’s largest corporation and a multinational conglomerate.

From 1900 until it achieved independence in 1947, India was a part of the British Empire. Tata bought Jaguar and Land Rover from American-owned Ford Motor Co. in 2008 for the bargain-basement price of $2.3 billion.

Think about that. Two former colonies of Great Britain, America and India, have owned legendary British automotive marques. America, which never took colonialism seriously, made a mess of both Jaguar and Land Rover. Having done so, it sold the remains of the once-proud British automotive companies to Tata of India.

Tata takes colonialism seriously. That is not an insult. It is why, so far, it is nurturing a somewhat successful rebirth of Land Rover and Jaguar. The caveat is needed because reality — slow sales — has yet to mate with perception — for example, that Land Rover is back in all of its glory with none of its former faults.

It is arguably true that the people who buy Land Rover’s top-of-the-line Range Rover HSE would not buy something like the slightly more expensive Porsche Cayenne sport-utility vehicle. For one thing, there is the matter of heritage. The Range Rover HSE has it. The nouveau riche Cayenne doesn’t. The people who buy Range Rovers value heritage. It is an essential part of their celebration of beauty.

The Range Rover brand has long had an association with British royalty. But Porsche’s Cayenne is associated with little other than a need to make money in global markets, mostly in North America, where drivers are clamoring for more SUVs.

Under Ford’s tutelage, Land Rover’s Range Rover sort of lost its way. The good news was that Ford brought much-improved technology to Range Rover — better engine and emissions controls and computer-controlled suspension systems. The bad news was that all of that Yankee know-how was introduced at the expense of Old World craftsmanship, highly valued by a certain class of people willing to spend big bucks on an automobile and then to invest even more in regional, national and international clubs to honor their favored marque.

Tata, with its legions of intelligence technology experts, improved the Yankee know-how. But it brought back the Old World craftsmanship in a way made possible only by a corporate mentality that deeply understood and valued the service of afternoon tea.