Kingsley Cars ULEZ Reborn Range Rover Classic 2021 first drive

You can have any colour you like; bring your Barbour wellies along and they can probably scan and copy their particular shade of green. They use nylon washers to prevent galvanic contact corrosion; they seam-seal every weld; and rubberized underbody protection stops road filth from eating its way into the car from underneath. No Range Rover made was ever so well-prepared to survive a British winter as this.

Kingsley’s work on the interior of the car is a little less wide-ranging, but as long as you don’t mind feeling like you’re driving a classic Range Rover, that’s just fine. They certainly don’t do nothing. Our test car (one Damon had restored five years ago which he has been using on and off ever since, and whose condition speaks volumes about the efficacy and longevity of Kinglsey’s work) had a retrimmed dashboard and pillars, some new ambient lighting features, and a 700-watt touchscreen stereo with seven speakers, wireless device charging and Apple CarPlay. Not bad for a chassis originally registered in 1971.

The ULEZ Reborn doesn’t present you with a modern-feeling driving position; it’s high, bent-legged and just a little ‘authentically crooked’, but still pleasingly comfortable with it. Kingsley replaces the car’s original dustin-lid-sized steering wheel with a smaller one, which makes the ergonomic layout feel instantly more contemporary. Otherwise, the cabin all looks and feels just about right: not overly gussied-up, which Range Rover devotees will be pleased to read. Visibility is utterly imperious: skinny pillars, a huge glasshouse and that famous old ‘comand’ vantage point see to that.

The driving experience is likewise authentic and so characterful, but judiciously modernised. Even with Kinglsey’s optional ‘fast road’ suspension (lowered springs, firmer anti-roll bars), its quickened steering box, wider tracks and new alloy wheels, there’s plenty of original Range Rover dynamic flavour about the way the car floats, sways, shoulders and settles its way down the road. But it grips and corners, too; better than you’ll believe it possibly could, actually - but not so hard as to change the graceful, luxurious, slightly aloof character of the Range Rover, so much admired for so long.

The ride is nicely isolated from lumps and bumps; not perfectly smooth or quiet, but better-connected to the Tarmac than ever the standard car was, and feels idiosyncratic with it. You get a little bit of wind flutter from around the door seals at fast motorway speeds, and the odd gentle rattle from the car’s sliding rear windows in their frames over sharp edges. Nothing that oughtn’t come with the territory really, or that would stop you from using one of these regularly, just as Kingsley advertises and intends.

Three engines are offered. All are Rover V8s true to the car’s history, ranging from 4.0- to 5.0 litres in capacity and from 240- to 330bhp. Our test car had the mid-range 4.6: an engine that’s been made over with new crankshafts, pistons, conrods, camshafts, valves, cylinder heads, a new exhaust and a new Lucas fuel injection system, producing just under 270bhp and more than 300lb ft of torque. It has a wonderfully redolent, whooshing, burbling, airy-sounding combustive soundtrack, too, that’s part car, part powerboat, part hovercraft. If you’ve forgotten how V8 Range Rovers used to sound, the Kingsley Classic will be a wonderfully welcome reminder.

Those outputs weren’t enough to make the car seem fast compared with modern performance SUVs, but you wouldn’t want it to be: it’s got as much poke as it can use. Our test car’s four-speed ZF torque-converter gearbox was a bit clunky, slushy, and slow to kick down; but the 4.6 engine has the torque to carry its long intermediate ratios in any case. 

You can really enjoy yourself at the wheel of this car, gently hustling a renewed old-stager along at a very modern pace, and drinking in a sense of occasion that feels hugely characterful and mechanically genuine, and really special: a million miles divorced from the low-effort, actively managed, perfectly sanitised experience of modern equivalents.