| Range Rover "Classic" | |
|---|---|
 1973 Range Rover | |
| Overview | |
| Manufacturer |
|
| Production | 1970–1996 (326,070 produced)[1] |
| Assembly | United Kingdom: Solihull Australia: Enfield Venezuela: Las Tejerías[2] |
| Designer | Spen King (1967) Gordon Bashford (1967) David Bache (1967) |
| Body and chassis | |
| Class | off-road vehicle |
| Body style | 3/5-door off-road vehicle |
| Related | Land Rover Discovery |
| Powertrain | |
| Engine | |
| Transmission | 4-speed manual (BL LT95) 5-speed manual (BL LT77) |
| Dimensions | |
| Wheelbase | 100.0 in (2,540 mm) (SWB) 108.0 in (2,743 mm) (LWB) |
| Length | 175 in (4,445 mm) (SWB) 183 in (4,648 mm) (LWB) |
| Width | 70.1 in (1,781 mm) |
| Height | 70.9 in (1,801 mm) (1970–1980) 70.1 in (1,781 mm) (1980 onwards) |
| Chronology | |
| Successor | Range Rover |
The Range Rover is a 4x4, mid-size off-road vehicle series produced from 1970 to 1996 – initially by the Rover (later Land Rover) division of British Leyland, and latterly by the Rover Group.
The first generation of vehicles produced under the Range Rover name, it was built as a two-door model for its first 11 years, until a four-door also became available in 1981. The Range Rover then successfully moved upmarket during the 1980s, and remarkably debuted in the U.S. as a 17-year old model at the 1987 Los Angeles Auto Show.[3]
Availability of the two-door version was restricted from 1984, but it remained in production for some markets until 1994, when the second generation was launched. From that moment, Land Rover rebranded the original model under the term Range Rover Classic, to distinguish it from its new P38A successor, when the two were briefly built alongside, and applied the name retrospectively to all first-generation Range Rovers.[4]
Although formally superseded by the second generation Range Rover, starting in 1994 – both the successor and the more affordable first and second series of the Land Rover Discovery were heavily based on the original Range Rover's chassis, drive-train and body-structure, which in essence lived on until the third generation Discovery arrived, and its mechanical blood-line ended with the replacement of the Mark 2 Discovery after 2004.
In early 2020, the 26-year production run of the original Range Rover was counted as the twenty-seventh most long-lived single generation car in history by Autocar magazine."[3]
- ^ Taylor, James (23 April 2018). Range Rover First Generation. Crowood. ISBN 9781785004124.
- ^ Range Rover Dateline, www.rovertrax.com. Retrieved 23 April 2014
- ^ a b "Survivors: The world's longest-living cars". Autocar.
- ^ Official Land Rover documentation collections for both 1970–1985 (LHP1, v1.1) and 1986–1994 (LHP2, v1.1) Range Rover refers to the vehicles as "Range Rover Classics", despite not being called that when originally built.