2011 Model Year

Next Range Rover Virtual Gauges better look like this #rangerover

As I’ve complained about many times before, the 12” TFT virtual gauge cluster that appeared with the 2010 Range Rover refresh, had better of been a beta test.  I believe it was a test of the technology that provided us a taste of what may come in the future.  In reality it provided nothing more then something to impress people with, the first time they see it, they can’t believe it.  Then when they hear it actually doesn’t do anything more then that, they all say the same thing – gimmick!

So today I read and watched about the new system Cadillac has coming and it just blew me away.

And here’s my hope, what we are seeing right now in our 2010 – 2012 Range Rovers is just a proof of concept and when generation two appears in the next Range Rover, it had better be a leap beyond what we’re seeing from Cadillac, since they’re just starting with the technology, right?

But don’t worry, I’m not holding my breath.

Interesting one-off Range Rover Spirito DiVino by Anzom #rangerover

This is from a few months back but still interesting – can’t say I love every design decision made for this but those floor mats really look cool.

http://www.topspeed.com/cars/landrover/2011-range-rover-spirito-divino-by-anzom-ar108161.html

2011.5 Model Year Range Rover gets new leather headliner options #rangerover

This is interesting, well interesting to me at least…

Not sure how new this is to the UK Range Rover site, but while I was checking it, as I do from time to time, there was a new item listed – “Headlining”.  In the US, the only leather headliner option is for the Range Rover Autobiography package and with that I believe there are really only two colors.

For the UK listing it appears to be available across the entire range, from the lowly Vogue to the range topping Autobiography

Vogue:

Autobiography:

Price List:

Range Rover Welcome Pack uses an interesting but scary USB trick. #rangerover

As they normally do, Land Rover sends the personalized Roadside Assistance card shortly after taking delivery of a vehicle.  This time it arrived in a sliding package with an interesting addition.

On the right is the standard Roadside Assistance card, actually the back of the card. 

On the left is the new addition (or new for me at least).

Offering to allow me to create a photo mosaic, I figured it was either a program on the USB key or just a bunch of pictures – similar to how they’ve been doing their press packs lately.  So I plugged it in and saw an unexpected sequence – running Windows 7, I saw the Run box appear, text was entered automatically (http://vcgw.net/****/*******, I substituted the asterisks) and then my browser appeared on the web page listed on that card.  What I found odd was that there was no prompt, no autorun box(which is actually blocked) – just a Run dialog, text entered and a browser window.  So I dug a little deeper into Device Manger:

And there it was under HIDs – USB Input Device.  I hadn’t seen one of these before but it’s a very interesting idea – it pretends it’s a keyboard and just enters in the commands directly as if they were being typed.  And while being neat, this could also be very, very dangerous – it’s like letting someone sit right at your keyboard.  And yes, I did have to plug it in but what if someone was able to hack that intermediate address that the USB device plugs in and instead of it redirecting to www.landroverusa.com/welcomerr it automatically brought up something much more malicious?  The actual companies being marketed have to trust that the vcgw.net domain stays legit because if they go out of business and someone plugs this into their computer, who know where it would take them and without any prompting.

Upon further searching, it looks like American Express & others have used the same device for their marketing as well – all with the vcgw.net redirection service.

Again, neat idea but maybe a little over done.

Land Rover video shows Range Rover LCD IP doing more then it currently does. #rangerover

When I did my first rant on the TFT-LCD Instrument Panel on the 2010+ Range Rover a few weeks back, my major complaint was the lack of additional functionality that we could get if they’d add in music and/or nav info in that center between the “gauges” area.  While checking out other videos from yesterday’s post on the Jaguar Land Rover Careers YouTube Channel, I found this Range Rover – Go Beyond video:

And right about 20 seconds in, we see this:

Right there, between the gauges, in the normally completely blank area on my North American spec 2011 Range Rover – we see audio system info.

So I ask, Land Rover, Please!  Or at least, Why?

What a difference a bend makes… #rangerover

I’ve had what I thought was an odd and isolated issue with the Surround Camera System in my 2011 Range Rover – from time to time and mostly at night, the reverse camera will go completely blue.

I’ve also seen it on the surround cameras too.  So I went to my favorite Range Rover Forums (http://rangerovers.net/forum/) and did a search.  Apparently it’s not as isolated as I thought and this post from a Range Rover Sport owner, aptly named it the Blue Screen of Death.  He even made a video:

In that post there is some great information and real Land Rover documentation on the issue.  The thing that really got me after reading everything is how much of an impact excessively tight cable bends can have on this system.  Here are some examples:

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I do completely realize that there are tolerances to everything and the cabling used here must not be the most resilient.  It’s just a little disappointing from a company that talks about the engineering that went into their iPod interface cable:

The dedicated iPod®/iPhone® point was designed with Apple, Inc. exclusively for Land Rover, to ensure the device won’t come loose from the socket, even in extreme driving conditions. iPod® and iPhone® are trademarks of Apple, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.

http://www.landrover.com/us/en/rr/range-rover/explore/hse/

Sorry, just another rant and I will continue to say, my current Range Rover configuration has to literally be one of the best vehicles currently on the road – see even after all that I still love you Land Rover.

2011 Range Rover – Adaptive Cruise Control – Automated Deceleration #rangerover

Still going through and figuring out the various systems in the 2011 Range Rover – while testing the Adaptive Cruise Control last night, I noticed it did a lot more braking then I expected.  So tonight I rigged up my iPhone to record while hanging around my neck and gave the system another test.

There’s nothing quite like a vehicle braking itself, and braking quite hard at that.  My foot was just resting on the brake pedal the entire time, but don’t try this at home.

2011 Range Rover TPMS System in Action–indicates which tire is below pressure #rangerover

I was playing around with the Adaptive Cruise Control tonight on the 2011 Range Rover, I’ll try to post about that soon – anyway on one of the rapid automated decelerations, a Tire Pressure warning popped up.  The interesting thing here was that it actually indicated which tire was low, in my previous 2008 Range Rover, it was just a single indicator, it was up to you to find the tire at fault.  I hadn’t seen this mentioned in the owner’s manual so, here’s what it looks like – sorry for the shaky-cam picture.

So is it Range Rover or The Range Rover? #rangerover

Doing a comparison the other day I noticed a small difference in the Land Rover US vs. UK website, I blew up these pics – can you see it?

In the UK, The Range Rover gets the name it deserves, here’s another couple of shots, just to show consistency:

So who is actually thinking about this at Land Rover U.S.  – why the difference?  Do they think it discriminates against the other “Range Rover” type models?

An idiosyncratic review of the 2011 Range Rover Autobiography – Intro & Part 1: TFT-LCD Instrument Cluster #rangerover

We’ll start this one off with a quote from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off:

It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

I was fortunate enough to pickup my 2011 Range Rover Autobiography a few weeks ago after ordering it back in September with no definite ETA. 

In a word  – Awesome. 

It’s about as close to a bespoke Range Rover as you can get in the US and it really feels like one.  The full leather trim feels both way upscale & the little differences in the leather or the way the trim goes together give it a real hand made quality.  The 510HP engine finally gives the Range Rover what it should always have had a Rolls Royce like – effortless power supply.  It seems in almost any situation, when you put your foot down, the Range Rover responds immediately.  Then on top of all that there are all the new technological gadgets that a Range Rover never really had before, and while a generation behind Mercedes or BMW, it finally feels like a modern vehicle.

I’ve had a 1995 P38A, ‘03 Range Rover HSE, ‘06 Range Rover Supercharged & an ‘08 Range Rover Supercharged, so I can talk with first-hand authority on what’s changed, what’s better & what’s worse.  And that’s really just what this review will be.  You can go to any other site and read a regular review that goes on and on about the normal stuff and lists standard features.

In fact, here are a couple right here:

http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/Drives/Search-Results/First-drives/Range-Rover-44-TDV8-2011-CAR-review/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/car-manufacturers/land-rover/8089617/Range-Rover-Autobiography-long-term-report.html

That said, this will be a way for me to both compliment and complain about the Range Rover. 

And to start with that “revolutionary” LCD-TFT Instrument Cluster.  For the 2010 refresh the Range Rover received a 12.3” TFT-LCD to replace the standard gauges – speedometer, tachometer, etc…  Here’s what it looks like in the official PR video:

It’s definitely a neat feature and a real conversation piece for anyone seeing it for the first time.  The images & text are very crisp, clear & bright – with only minimal washout from the sun at various angles.  But after getting used to it, it doesn’t seem to be any better then actual gauges and is really what I believe just a field test for the hardware that they may use in the next Range Rover.  You’d think with all that space on the screen, they could easily take advantage of it to display navigational arrows or even what’s playing on the stereo.  But no, in normal use, it’s the two dials with a big empty black space between them.

As shown above, that’s the “normal” display – warnings/system settings will appear in the middle area when needed but for the most part that black area remains completely blank 99% of the time.

The funny thing here is that if you look at almost all of the brochure pictures available they show the display with the graphic of a Range Rover in that middle area like this, from the official website.

If you notice at the bottom of the display it shows Mud-Ruts and the other Terrain Response icons, the reason for that is because that Range Rover profile graphic is only displayed for a few seconds when turning on Terrain Response.  Then it switches to a display like this:

This is the only time the power of the TFT-LCD is put to use and actually even more so when in Rock Crawl as in this shot below from the official website:

I’ll just finish with something I noticed the marketing people are doing when describing the new system.  And while I realize I’m nit-picking and the way they word it makes it valid but they like to say as on the website:

The new 12 inch TFT-LCD virtual instrument panel uses the same technology found in high-quality computer laptops and can be both personalized and adapted to suit various driving conditions or personal preference.

And again in this very recent print ad below , they tout:

“TFT-LCD instrument cluster creates a new standard of customized driver information and control”

I guess you could say it’s customized in the sense that you can turn on and off a few options but for the most part, there isn’t really much to customize.  Outside of what you previously(pre-2010) set through the main touchscreen – language, units, etc.., you can turn on/off the flashlight effect which can be seen in the previous picture where the road & engine speeds have a highlight on them while darkening the other numbers on the dial.  And that’s really it – no option to display the audio system info or to display navigational prompts – I don’t even think there are any color options, not that I’d want any, just pushing “customizable” point.

And just to cover my bases, yes there are other settings there, but again there’s no reason any of those settings couldn’t be set through the touchscreen.  I don’t see how turning on and off the HBA through the touchscreen really makes it customizable.  And really, I guess they are there to give the right-hand steering wheel controller something to do.

And one more shot of the Forward Alert system in action, so you can see that they do actually use the in between section from time to time.  When turned on(through the LCD, ha), Forward Alert will pop up the triangle warning and sound a chime if it senses you’re going to possibly collide with a vehicle in front of you.  It’s actually really neat.  There is a curve near where I live that when the situation is just right will cause it to go off every time I approach it, and that’s where I was when I took this picture – sorry it’s so blurry, but I think you’ll get the idea.

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So can anyone at Land Rover actually explain some of the customizable options?  Will we ever see some software updates on the 2010/2011’s that will give us more functionality?

I’ll just close this one now and get back to the general feel of the 2011, all the little things they’ve added and tweaked are indicative of a Range Rover model at the end of it’s run – like they did with the 1995 Range Rover Classic interior & the 2001 Range Rover 4.6 chrome interior bits. This is also a sign of what should be a very solid truck with years of polish.  I can’t say enough good things overall about this latest Range Rover, but they still do seem to be stuck at that 90% point – where if they just put in 10% more work, it would be perfect (for a Range Rover that is).

And up next, some little differences I’ve noticed…

Thanks for reading! 

And one other video – something I filmed the other day – Starting the Range Rover: