Porsche boss Wendelin Wiedeking once famously remarked: "No-one needs a 911." Not many people need an SUV, either. Oh sure, plenty of folks have convinced themselves they do, but in most cases what they actually buy is a high-riding station wagon with faintly macho styling: Some 50 percent of all SUVs sold in the US are actually two wheel drive models, and so about as useful off the pavement as the Wagon Queen Family Truckster. Go figure.
I was thinking about this over the weekend as I tip-toed a Land Rover LR3 through a forest ablaze with fall color on the 8000 acre Biltmore Estate in North Carolina. Tricky climbs, heart-stopping descents, deep waterholes, nasty ruts, chassis-twisting undulations: It was a walk in the park for the LR3, our 2005 Sport Utility of the Year winner.
I learned to drive in an early 60s Land Rover Series II with about a million miles on the clock and no synchro on first or second gears. It went damn near anywhere, that old Landie, but it was a visceral ride; all sweat and muscle when the going got tough. In the LR3, Land Rover's impressive Terrain Response System, which electronically links all the vehicle sub-systems - suspension, differentials, throttle, transmission, braking - and optimizes them to suit the surface you select from a menu on the center console, does most of the heavy lifting.
One thing hasn't changed, though -- although you might be travelling at little more than walking pace, serious off-roading is driving every bit as technical and challenging as hot-lapping a racetrack. You're constantly thinking about the physics at work in the interplay between vehicle and surface; always aiming to place each wheel with millimetric accuracy. The most notable difference is that if you make a mistake off-roading, you usually have a lot more time to think about it as the consequences unfold before you in slow motion.
The Land Rover LR3 is a lot like a Porsche 911 - function has been transcended by fashion. Many owners buy the style or the badge rather than the ability; few have any real idea what their vehicle can do, and fewer still have gotten anywhere near the limits of its performance. Demonstrating to folks what the Land Rover badge really means is the idea behind the Land Rover Experience Driving School.
The Land Rover Experience Driving School at Biltmore Estate (it uses land around the stunning 250 room Biltmore House built by George W. Vanderbilt in the late 1800s) is one of four in North America. The others are in Manchester Village,Vermont, Carmel, California, and Montebello, Quebec. The schools offer everything from one hour tasters for people who have never ventured off the blacktop, to full day advanced winch and recovery techniques for those who understand that a four wheel drive vehicle, no matter how accomplished, does not transcend the laws of physics.
As we noted during this year's Sport Utility of the Year evaluation, the term SUV is now applied to everything from high-riding hot rods (BMW X6, Infiniti FX) to 21st century riffs on the traditional full size station wagon (Ford Flex, Chevy Traverse). Form following marketing, I guess. Like a track day in a Porsche 911, my drive in the Land Rover LR3 at Biltmore Estate was a welcome reminder of a deeper truth, however: Form still follows function.