Range Rover says you can have it all

This week, in the wilds of Morocco, Land Rover is proving you can have your car cake while still gobbling it down in huge tasty chunks. Its new Range Rover is both an omnipotent off-roader and a Benz-belting luxury car. It re-defines the top end of the SUV business.

But it wasn't always like that. The original Land Rover of the late 1940s was little more than a tractor with a roof. The very first four-wheel drive runabout, the Jeep, was just plain primitive. 

I was shocked when I drove a World War II vintage Jeep and discovered that it was cramped and tiny in the cabin, slow and cumbersome to drive, with seats that were like upright hammocks and no sign of a heater or even a turn signal.

It made a 1980s Hyundai Excel feel like a Rolls-Royce. But those were the early days of four-wheel drives, and as relevant to 21st century SUVs as the Wright Brothers biplane is to an Airbus 380. These days, less than 10 per cent of four-wheel drives ever head off the bitumen and more and more are being built with only front-wheel drive to make them more affordable for Australian families.

If you also take out the people who tow horses, or drag boats out of the water, the number of hard-working four-wheel drives falls even more dramatically. That's why they are now called SUVs. Just for the record, and in case you've ever wondered, SUV stands for Sports Utility Vehicle.

It's a tag that was first applied in the USA, so that people who craved a tough-looking family truck could excuse it to their friends as something more than an off-roader or a tow truck. SUV sounded like yuppie fun and was translated as Sports Utility Vehicle.

I've always wondered where the Sports kicks in, particularly in a Toyota LandCruiser or a Nissan Patrol, but they are more sporty than an average American family sedan. These days, the tag twisters have also come up with SAV for Sports Activity Vehicle - could you guess BMW? - and a bunch of other labels for the new-age family wagons that dominate in most countries.

They have won us over with high-rider driving positions, giant flexible cabins and styling that tells your friends you're adventurous, not bogged in a family rut. But never forget that SUVs, even something as impressive as the super-costly Range Rover, share the same roots with the humble fighting Jeep and the Land Rover that Her Majesty still likes to use for climbing through the Scottish highlands.