Range Rover Autobiography 2025 Review

There was a time when a Range Rover was a single luxury model, the first of its luxury breed. These days, that original luxury SUV is now a family. And while there’s a Range Rover Evoque (small), Velar (sleeker and sportier) and Sport (err, still sporty but also practical), it’s the plain old Range Rover that tops the family tree.

It still wears those familiar Land Rover badges but is never really referred to as a Land Rover.

Life at the top doesn’t come cheap and the (big) Range Rover kicks off at $258,489 plus on-road costs (ORCs) for the D350 HSE (the alpha-numeric combo denotes petrol or diesel and how much horsepower it punches out, followed by the trim level).

Step up to the V8-powered P530 and it starts at $290,338 plus ORCs for the HSE.

The Autobiography model we sampled is $331,434 plus ORCs, to which you can add a third row of seats ($339,314 plus ORCs) or a longer wheelbase for more luxurious five-seat legroom ($337,614 plus ORCs).

If you want more then Land Rover can deliver with the P615 (a more powerful, sportier V8) that sells for up to $443,436 plus ORCs.

There’s even a Bespoke Orpheus Edition ($533,670 plus ORCs) to really take you into uber luxury territory.

Obvious rivals include the Bentley Bentayga, Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen, Mercedes-Benz GLS, Lexus LX, BMW X7 and Audi Q7.

If you’re just looking for an uber luxurious – and rare – SUV, you could even throw the Ferrari Purosangue, Porsche Cayenne and Rolls-Royce Cullinan into the mix.

Land Rover would argue none match the off-road nous matched with top-end luxury that the Range Rover has refined over more than half a century.

The Range Rover Autobiography comes packed with all the trimmings you’d find in a top-shelf limousine.

Standard equipment includes 22-inch alloy wheels, smart key entry, adjustable height air suspension with adaptive dampers, four-wheel steering, matrix LED headlights, doors that suck themselves closed, a power adjustable (and heated) steering wheel, panoramic sunroof, ambient lighting, electrically adjustable front seats (with memory settings for outboard seats), heated and cooled front seats, electrically folding rear arm rest, four-zone climate control, powered tailgate, powered luggage cover and a thumping 35-speaker Meridian sound system.

The leather is the real deal (and seriously sumptuous) as is the wood and splashes of metallic highlights.

There’s also no shortage of electric assistance to everything, from the seat adjustment front and rear to the central arm rest and split tailgate. An electric sun blind for the roof teams with electrically retracting side blinds to ensure you won’t have to exert yourself to find privacy. Each of the door handles retracts flush to the body and there’s also a full-size spare wheel.

As with most cars at this rarefied end of the luxury market, there’s a plethora of options and the ability to tailor and customise everything from exterior colours and wheels to the leather and roof lining.

You can choose a fridge for the centre console and a ‘Tailgate Event Suite’ that adds leather cushions, speakers and lighting to the fold-down tailgate.

Ours was also fitted with 23-inch alloy wheels, massaging outboard seats (four in total) and electrically adjustable rear seats with memory buttons.

The Range Rover also has the first five years or 130,000km of servicing included. Servicing is condition based so intervals are variable depending on how the car is driven.

It is covered by a five-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty.

The Range Rover Autobiography gets all the safety trinkets, starting with autonomous emergency braking, driver monitoring, front and rear parking sensors and a 360-degree camera.

There’s also blind-spot warning and rear cross-traffic alert.

Plus it gets lane-keep assistance and speed-sign recognition.

About the only thing missing is an exit warning system to alert of approaching vehicles when parked.

The warnings can get a tad eager to beep, especially in telling you you’re speeding in a school zone outside of school zone hours.

But the system can be quickly dulled by the press of a button on the steering wheel; you can even customise your own settings.

The Range Rover was crash tested by ANCAP and rated five stars according to the 2022 protocols.

It may be laced in tradition but the Range Rover Autobiography is also packed with tech.

A curved 13.1-inch touchscreen sets the scene and dominates the minimalist dash that otherwise lets natural materials tell the luxury story.

It incorporates wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, with the screen layout packing in more apps than usual.

There’s also a head-up display and digital instrument cluster.

Ours was fitted with optional 11.4-inch rear infotainment screens ($6850) that include headphones and a pair of HDMI ports in the centre console to allow devices to send data to them (integrating YouTube and other streaming services seems to make more sense).

Another option fitted to ours was the AC power outlet that allows you to juice up household items.

The Meridian Signature sound system is also worthy of special mention. It incorporates 34 regular speakers – including speakers in the roof – and a subwoofer for crisp, clear, 3D sound. There’s ‘cabin correction’ and noise cancelling as well as ‘Meridian Digital Dither Shaping’ designed to deliver a more natural sound.

The Range Rover also has over-the-air software functionality and a connected app to monitor the car remotely.

As with the rest of the car, there’s tradition mixed with modern tech beneath the bonnet.

At its heart is a 4.4-litre twin-turbo V8 marketed as Ingenium but supplied by BMW. It’s matched to an eight-speed automatic transmission constantly driving all four wheels.

There’s mild hybrid assistance to help lower fuel use, although clearly the focus here is on performance and luxury refinement.

The engine pumps out a heady 390kW and is backed by 750Nm of torque, the latter produced from as low as 2000rpm.

It’s claimed to reach 100km/h in 4.6 seconds on the way to a top speed of 250km/h.

The Range Rover Autobiography isn’t a car you buy to save the planet.

Its official fuel use figure is 11.1L/100km, something that swells to 16.0L/100km around town.

It’s easy to use more than that if you go enjoying the effortless V8 grunt.

Equally, though, drive it in more of a limousine style and you can get it close to its official average claim of 11.1L/100km.

Average CO2 emissions are way up at 258g/km.

The 90-litre fuel tank means you could be stopping regularly for premium unleaded.

Starting the engine of the 2025 Range Rover Autobiography gives you an idea of what to expect.

There’s barely a rumble, the silky smooth V8 gently waking with a refined thrum.

It’s impressively quiet and in keeping with the air of luxury. The stop-start system is seamless when it shuts things down when stationary.

There’s no shortage of thrust, either.

For a car eclipsing 2.5 tonnes (2510kg, to be precise), the Range Rover P530 leaps enthusiastically.

There’s stout pulling power across the rev range and the V8 synchronises nicely with the eight-speed auto.

Yet while it’s loaded with grunt it goes against the grain of what the Range Rover is all about: wispy luxury.

It’s the sort of car that encourages you to drive it gently and enjoy the serenity, right down to the very quiet cabin.

Speaking of which, the air suspension is beautifully supple. Even on low-profile tyres it smothers all but the sharpest bumps.

It leans more than your average limo through corners, at least in Comfort mode.

You can dial up Dynamic mode to sharpen things up and tighten the steering, but that also seems to go against the whole ethos of the Range Rover.

At least it demonstrates that the car is ultimately impressively well sorted on the road, something it backs up with top-shelf comfort.

Four-wheel steering also helps with around-town manoeuvrability. Tight carparks and narrow streets are that little bit easier courtesy of the all-wheel steering system.

Yes, the Range Rover Autobiography can go off-road, but would you?

We’re guessing the closest most will get to mud will be the carpark at Flemington Racecourse or the polo. Or possibly the driveway to the hobby farm.

We’re not expecting to see many pounding a path to Cape York or tackling Big Red.

Still, it’s got the hardware – and software – to make rough road life easier.

It starts with a dual-range transfer case and three locking differentials.

The Range Rover also has some tricky software, including what controls the electronically locking differentials. They cleverly lock and unlock automatically, allowing the extra traction when locked without the cornering compromises when you need to turn.

There’s also a selection of pre-programmed off-road modes – Auto, Comfort, Grass/Gravel/Snow, Mud Ruts, Sand, Rock Crawl and Wade – that tailor everything from the traction control and throttle response to when the differentials locks and the steering feel. It’ll also adjust the ride comfort.

There are also four configurable drive modes.

Kudos to Land Rover for giving owners that level of detail, but we can’t imagine too many wanting any more adjustments than what the pre-programmed modes already offer.

As for the more serious off-road credentials, the Range Rover has an approach angle of 26.1 degrees and a departure angle of 24.5 degrees. The ramp over angle is 21.4 degrees.

The ground clearance in regular mode is 219mm but that stretches to a towering 295mm when in its highest off-road setting.

It can also wade through up to 900mm of water.

So, how does all that stack up off-road?

No idea... I didn’t dare take such SUV extravagance beyond the black-top.

The Range Rover Autobiography is a sizeable unit with a cabin to match.

But those in the rear don’t get quite as much legroom as the exterior heft may suggest. That’s in part because of the screens hanging off the backs of the front seats that make everything seem that little bit closer.

It’s opulence throughout, though, from the plush leather and real wood to the sculpting of the seats and influx of technology. Even the carpet is a step above your average automotive flooring.

Those in the rear can press a button on their own central screen and the vast central arm rest extends to reveal a pair of cup holders.

There’s also storage within that arm rest, as well as a place for your phone.

Getting in and out is fairly easy because the car lowers 50mm each time you shut it down.

And up front there’s no shortage of space as well as plenty of old-school Range Rover familiarity.

The broad door sills are perfect for a lazy elbow and in the centre are the brilliant adjustable folding arm rests.

Configurable ambient lighting glows throughout, even around the seatbelt buckles (hey, it’s all about the details!).

Adjusting the seats is done via easily accessible Mercedes-Benz-like controls on the doors and they cleverly house a trio of memory buttons on each side.

Dual sun visors on each side allow you to have one facing forward and one to the side.

But if you want to adjust the seat heating or cooling or the massaging functions – there’s Wave, Pulse, Pulse Duo, Combination and Hot Stones that can attack from any direction – then you’re delving into the touchscreen.

Land Rover has packed plenty into that screen, something that negatively impacts the functionality.

Adjusting the volume is done via the screen, as is the multitude of driving adjustments.

Whereas Land Rover invented the terrain mode dial it’s now gone for more starkness and instead relied on pixels to get the job done.

One gripe is the position of the inner door handle – low and forward – that meant I wasn’t the only one that went for the occasional double fumble trying to locate it.

Around the back is the Range Rover’s brilliant split tailgate (why Toyota dropped it for the LandCruiser is a mystery). And electric motors again come to the fore.

Raise the tailgate and a motor slides the hard luggage cover up and forward. Press another button and the lower tailgate section elegantly descends to create a table of sorts.

All up there’s 818 litres of boot space if you pack things to the roof. And there’s another one of those massive wheels and tyres beneath the boot floor.

The Range Rover Autobiography has morphed from a luxurious off-roader into a limousine that happens to be an SUV.

If it’s a limo you’re chasing, the Rangie is a brilliant way to do it in high-riding style.

It’s an accomplished car to drive, too, with a sumptuous ride and luxury oozing from every pore and pixel.

There’s the occasional misstep, such as the touchscreen that’s trying to do too much, and the off-road ability that seems to have been included more in spirit rather than because owners will genuinely want to get their mega SUV bounding over boulders.

There’s something else that needs to be tabled: reliability.

Land Rovers have a reputation for failing to function, something that can get expensive once the warranty has ended.

And there’s a lot that can go wrong in the latest Range Rover.

That said, it’s a beautiful and opulent car when new and a reputation for solid residuals means it’s likely to be worth more than your average limousine a few years down the track. And it well and truly takes the luxury SUV fight to arguably bigger names in the luxury sphere.

2025 Range Rover Autobiography at a glance:
Price: $331,434 (plus on-road costs)
Available: Now
Engine: 4.4-litre mild-hybrid twin-turbo-petrol V8
Output: 390kW/750Nm
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Fuel: 11.1L/100km (ADR Combined)
CO2: 258g/km (ADR Combined)
Safety rating: Five stars (ANCAP 2022)

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