Gear Patrol

Sometimes being American causes us great pain, especially when it comes to rides we can (1) never afford (which seems to occur often) and (2) never see in the States. Like a hot poker in the eye, Land Rover has issued a celebratory 65th Anniversary all-terrain yak known simply as the Land Rover Defender LXV (~$44,500).

Imagine spending years designing, redesigning, engineering and finally building a car — only to have public opinion weigh in on your baby. No pressure, right? Well, at this year’s New York International Auto Show, plenty of brands did a damn good job. We were tantalized by some of what’s to come: cars that will certainly hit production in some form or another (and thank goodness for that). From track beasts to practical and attractive sedans, we rounded up the cream of the crop, in our humble opinion. Take a look at the 10 best in show.

The remote West is a far cry from where most modern SUVs claim their stomping grounds, but it’s exactly where we found ourselves recently. Utah’s desert landscape isn’t what you’d call sparse, as far as scenery is concerned. Sedimentary rock formations that range from the utterly massive to the small and bizarre are scattered as far as the eye can see, peppered by small patches of remnant snow and capped by the beautiful winter desert sky. But this is where we tested the 2013 Range Rover — and the car felt right at home.

How do you really define overkill? Is 510 horsepower too much or just being prepared? If your $100K luxury SUV can climb a 45 degree muddy slope in a forest, but only goes on grocery runs, does it really make a sound? The 2013 Range Rover Sport Supercharged answers the question, “what if you wanted…

If you fancy yourself a lover of history, the outdoors, bowler hats and cigars, look no further. The Winston Churchill Series 1 Land Rover goes up for auction in the Cheffins Vintage Sale on October 20th, 2012. The included original logbook shows the vehicle as UKE 80, owned by Rt Hon. Sir Winston Spencer Churchill,…

We’ve got a huge soft spot for Land Rover, so we were stoked to get wind of details behind the 2013 Range Rover. Though it’s not nearly as radical in design as the Evoque we recently drove, it does borrow some of the athletic design cues from its baby brother. The shape, though essentially unchanged,…

If you’re looking for quite possibly the most stylish cute/brute-ute on the planet, you won’t have to look much further than the 2012 Land Rover Range Rover Evoque. Not so loosely based on 2008′s LRX Concept, the Evoque is meant to turn heads, empty wallets and generally be driven by urban dwellers who have no…

Niche British car maker Bowler has been making road rally vehicles that can take serious punishment since 1989. Now they’ve gone all pedestrian on us by making a street-legal passenger vehicle. With the assistance of Land Rover in the creation of its powertrain, the all new Bowler EXR S ($242,000) delivers some serious automotive firepower…

Sometimes we wonder, given the job prospects and varying degrees of instability, if writing auto reviews was the right decision for our lives. But then we realize that if Fate had wanted us to be anything else, we wouldn’t look so dang good behind the wheel. And so it goes, saddling up our horses we…

We don’t envy Land Rover. Upgrading, modifying, or simply touching their icon, the Defender is about as much of a Pandora’s Box as they come. But such is the way of progress, and in just a month, Land Rover will be unveiling their first concept, the DC100 at the Frankfurt Auto Show. Like any concept,…

This story begins more than a decade ago. Two, really. All the way back to 1993. When you say it, 1993 doesn’t really seem like all that long ago. But it was a year full of memorable events. Lennox Lewis beat Tony Tucker for the heavyweight title, Intel announced the groundbreaking Pentium processor and NBC…

Danish tuning company Startech has leaked a custom variant for one of our most favorite vehicles, the Land Rover Defender. On display at this year’s Essen Motorshow, the Land Rover Defender 90 Yachting Edition is essentially a standard hardtop Defender SVX from the outside only distinguished by its custom bright white paint, running boards with…

After Land Rover updated the Range Rover Sport , the car specialists at Project Kahn decided to follow suit with their lava-inspired Vesuvius edition. The new iteration features an orange and black aero package that’s matched by the SUV’s custom quilted and perforated leather interior, proving that Kahn Designs clearly had Gear Patrol in mind…

An SUV Worth Its Salt Lets turn back a little over one decade ago to 1997. A year when men were mired in news about Princess Diana’s passing, cloned sheep, and photos beamed from Mars. Oh, and Land Rover would be forced to stop selling the Land Rover Defender due to airbag regulations. Most of…

[click on image to enlarge] A vehicle I’ve always wanted for as long as I can remember is a red 1997 Land Rover Defender 90. It was the last year the Defender was available in the United States before airbag laws prevented Land Rover from selling it. Iconic, at the very least, the Land Rover…

[click on image to enlarge] There are few joys of receiving press releases. One of the benefits though are images. Sexy, flawless, professional shot images. We of course, like to pass that along to you. Recently, there have been writers abuzz with the new Land Rover LRX Concept. Autoblog, Jalopnik, and Inside Line as examples….

The all new 2008 Land Rover LR2 is a 4-door, 5-passenger luxury sport-utility, available in one trim only, the i6. It’s a great one, even if pricey. 3.2-liter, inline 6 cylinder 230-horsepower engine 18-mpg and an oddly disproportionate 33-mpg on the highway 6-speed automatic transmission with overdrive Available in Tambora Flame (the color shown) What…