Willys Jeep vs Range Rover: how has off-road capability changed?

Ever since God was a child, people have been trying to solve the conundrum of how to get places.

First it was just with our legs. Then we discovered horses and worked out that their limbs were better than ours.

Then, skipping forward a tad, the industrial revolution dropped and the options multiplied tenfold: cars, bikes, trains, planes, scooters, hoverboards and on and on, ad infinitum.

But the fundamentals of getting somewhere tricky have remained remarkably constant in our Autocar world – four bits of rubber shrouding four round bits of metal. And yet, as you can see from the images here, there’s a vast difference across the decades as to how that conundrum is solved.

To the new car, then. It’s the Range Rover plug-in hybrid, and while it’s not ideally suited to out-and-out off-road adventuring (more on that shortly), it is absolutely laden with the latest electronic off-road tech.

You could argue that we should have had the Land Rover Defender on this test, it being the halo off-roader and the ultimate expression of where the capability has got to, but to be honest I’m more interested in where the technology has enabled luxury and mud to mix.

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Introducing the Willys Jeep

How far can this tech be pushed? Certainly a chunk further than with the other car here. It’s a Willys Jeep, of the M38A1 variety.

Technically it’s not the oldest of the breed, as this particular one was built in 1955 under licence in the Netherlands (a Nekaf Dutch variant, to be precise), but if Spyker can claim to be the first with a four-wheel-drive passenger vehicle, it’s generally accepted that Willys and the original WW2 Jeep made the genre what it is today. And this car is a successor to that icon of the Second World War.

It’s basic in the extreme: leaf spring suspension all round, a choice of four- and two-wheel drive that is switchable by a very long lever, and a high- and low-range gearbox, all powered by a water-cooled, four-cylinder Hurricane engine linked to a three-speed ’box.

There are no doors or heater, and technology is limited to a set of dials, most of which don’t seem to work. If an item isn’t needed in order to fulfil the car’s singular, go-anywhere purpose, it’s not on it.

Introducing the Range Rover

The contrast to the Range Rover is extreme. Here is the car that should be able to drive both to and up the ski slope, with barely a fluster.

Air suspension that can raise the body by 135mm and Land Rover’s first-ever five-link rear axle take care of the comfort, while the six-setting Terrain Response 2, e-locking rear and centre diffs, rear-axle steering with 7.3deg of possible turn and low-speed gearbox mean the off-road box is also ticked.

The reason it’s not the ideal Range Rover is because of the PHEV element. While that is enabling us to achieve fuel economy in the mid- to high 30s, the 38.2kWh battery sits low under the chassis, thereby reducing the ramp angle by 2.5deg and the ground clearance by 11mm from a regular Range Rover.

The aim of the day, then, is a simple one. To discover if luxury has blunted ability.

Off-road performance: Range Rover

We start off with a seriously steep drop down into a quarry, where the challenge is not only the angle but also the surface, being a vicious mix of smooth stone and more grippy shale rock.

The four cameras on the Rangie immediately come in handy – although Gerry McGovern’s styling looks good on the King’s Road, it tapers away from the visible edges so the car is difficult to place.