The one to have.
There is a point in every model’s life where the price stops reflecting the car. The L405 has reached it. Late L322s have quietly climbed past their successors, collected now as the last of the old order; the L460 remains too new to be anything other than expensive. Between them sits a car that is better than the first and, in the ways that matter daily, not meaningfully behind the second.
The 2017 model year is the one to have. It carries InControl Touch Pro – the single ten-inch screen, sharper camera feeds, a system that finally worked – arriving a full year before the facelift. What the facelift added was a second screen beneath the first, absorbing the climate controls into glass. It has not aged as gracefully as the mechanical switchgear it replaced, and it is not cheap when it misbehaves. This car has the update that mattered and not the one that followed it.
Which leaves the Range Rover itself: aluminium-monocoque, twin-turbocharged V8 diesel, 740Nm from 1,750rpm, and one of the few cars capable of covering four hundred miles without asking anything of its driver.
Atlas is Land Rover’s own name for the satin bronze-grey finish it began applying in place of chrome — borrowed from the mountain range that runs across Morocco, and adopted precisely because it does not shine. Dark Atlas takes the idea further still, drawing the brightwork down to something closer to graphite. It is a specification choice made by owners who would rather their Range Rover were noticed for its shape than its jewellery.
This car wears it exactly as intended. Loire Blue is among the more considered colours in the Range Rover palette: a deep marine navy that reads almost black beneath a Surrey sky and resolves into genuine blue the moment the sun finds it. Against the darkened detailing, the effect is quiet and expensive. The glass is clear rather than privacy-tinted, which lightens the car’s flanks and lets the interior show – a small decision that says a good deal about the original specifier.
The 22-inch Style 7007 wheels sit correctly in the arches without tipping the car towards ostentation, and are shod in Pirelli Scorpion Verde. The paintwork was fully machine polished and ceramic coated in March, and presents accordingly.
Inside, Almond and Espresso is the warmer of the two-tone combinations, and the better one. Almond is a soft, sandy cream rather than a cool white; it has a domestic quality to it, closer to unbleached linen than to a showroom. Set beneath Espresso through the upper cabin, it produces something genuinely restful — light where the eye falls, dark where the light comes in. Against Loire Blue’s deep navy, the contrast is the same one a navy jacket makes against a chamois glove.
The seats deserve a paragraph of their own, because this is where a previous owner did something rather clever.
The pre-facelift seat is heavily bolstered, and on a long run those bolsters can leave you numb in places you would rather not be. The 2018 facelift addressed it with a flatter, wider base and the bolstering largely removed – more comfortable initially, but with nowhere for weight to be displaced, those bases wear noticeably faster over the years. Neither is quite right.
This car’s owner took it to a trimmer and had an additional layer of foam installed in the base. You would never know to look at it; the seat is visually untouched, the leather original and unmarked. Sit in it, then sit in a car without it, and the difference is immediate. It is precisely the sort of intervention nobody makes to a car they are preparing to sell.
The remaining equipment is comprehensive. Autobiography comes with all of the things you need : Panoramic Sliding Roof, Heated & Cooled Front & Rear Outer Seats, Massage Front Seats, Meridian Sound, Soft Close, Alcantara Headlining, Armrest Fridge, Adaptive cruise – the list does on and on. Additionally, it benefits from an electrically deployable tow bar -which folds entirely out of sight beneath the rear valance and appearing at the touch of a switch – invaluable for a horsebox or trailer, invisible the rest of the time. A custom-fit boot liner completes a car specified by someone who intended to use it properly.
Which brings us to the record, and it is an unusually good one. Two owners from new and twelve services across ten years — beginning at Land Rover Gaydon at 1,066 miles in January 2018, then eight consecutive visits to Harwoods of Edenbridge, followed by Stratstone Tonbridge and most recently SSG Ottershaw. The intervals fall consistently in January, February or March. That is a car booked in by the calendar rather than by the warning light.
The pattern continues into the work itself. All additional service items were attended to at 63,000 miles – gearbox oil, front and rear differential oil, auxiliary belt and transfer case. These are the expensive, easily deferred jobs that separate a maintained SDV8 from a neglected one, and none of them is prompted by a fault. The oil cooler was replaced in March; the rear differential bearings in June.
Read that list properly and a temperament emerges. This is not a car that has been fixed. It is a car that was never allowed to break.
Presented in wonderful condition throughout, and sorted in a way that very few are.
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SERVICE HISTORY:
LR Gaydon – 11/01/2018 – 1,066 miles
Hardwoods Edenbridge – 24/01/2019 – 4,580 miles
Harwoods Edenbridge – 28/08/2019 – 9,678 miles
Harwoods Edenbridge – 11/03/2020 – 14,336 miles
Harwoods Edenbridge – 23/02/2021 – 20,794 miles
Harwoods Edenbridge – 09/02/2022 – 28,880 miles
Harwoods Edenbridge – 02/02/2023 – 37,598 miles
Harwoods Edenbridge – 19/01/2024 – 44,999 miles
Harwoods Edenbridge – 19/03/2024 – 46,742 miles
Stratstone Tonbridge – 29/01/2025 – 53,612 miles
SSG Ottershaw – 10/12/2025 – 63,317 miles
SSG Ottershaw – 16/03/2026 – 67,355 miles
