► Limited edition from Overfinch
► Collaboration with gun maker Holland & Holland
► Based on long-wheelbase SV
Improving on the current Range Rover? That’s a tall order. It’s a car so comfortable, capable and quick – a car that created and still defines its class. But what you can do is ratchet up the luxury, making it more akin to the Rolls-Royce Cullinan and Bentley Bentayga.
Meet the Holland & Holland Edition by Overfinch, renowned restorers, modifiers and tuners of Land Rovers and Range Rovers since 1975. It’s not an authorised JLR product. Rather, it takes the range-topping long-wheelbase SV, leaves it mechanically unchanged and then burnishes it to look a little fancier, and offers options that equip it for weekend shooting parties, in a reprise of the spirit of two earlier Holland & Holland/Overfinch Range Rover makeovers. This, the partners say, will be the most luxurious Range Rover ever made.
This car is the start of a five-year partnership. Only 25 will be built at Overfinch’s factory near Leeds, with a price that varies depending on exact specification, but starting from around double the SV’s £180k cost.
The exterior, in British Racing Green, gains Overfinch and Holland & Holland badging, and new 23-inch wheels. Inside there’s a choice of colour combinations for the Bridge of Weir leather and walnut trim, with lots of brass and recurring swirls and diamond-shapes familiar from Holland & Holland guns.
We’ve not driven it but we’ve sat in it, and it’s very agreeable: clearly still a Range Rover, but more plush and timeless.
The biggest contribution from the London gun maker, established 1835, is focused on the options available in the boot. Here you will find two optional ‘companion’ chests. On top, a two-bottle champagne compartment and two drawers for Holland & Holland crockery, cutlery, corkscrews and napkins. Below, a case for two guns, plus spirit bottles and tumblers. It’s all beautifully made, everything sliding with perfectly damped precision.
Kevin Sloane, Overfinch CEO and chair, says the Holland & Holland Edition took more than a year to create, with close collaboration between the two companies and their various suppliers. ‘Everything you see is British,’ he says, from the self-levelling H&H centre caps on the wheels to the badges made in Birmingham’s jewellery quarter.
The focus is on the craftsmanship rather than attempting to change the nature of an already excellent 4×4. ‘It’s a beautiful car [to start with] and we need to be careful how we interact with it,’ he says.
Michael Ray-Jones from Holland & Holland adds: ‘Rather than anything flashy or ostentatious, it fits with our design ethos.’