How Range Rover Became a Cultural Icon
After 55 years at the top of its game, the Range Rover is a bona fide icon. Though many pretenders have come for its crown, and other brands have tried to copy whole cloth Range Rover’s formula for success, nothing else has the Range Rover’s charm, its pedigree, its class and cultural cachet. Today, 55 years on from its debut in 1970, the Range Rover still sits in a class of its own. This is its story.
The Making of a Cultural Icon
Rewind to 1970. IBM introduces the floppy disk. The Boeing 747 makes its first commercial flight. Black Sabbath introduces the world to heavy metal. And Land Rover unveils the Range Rover, a machine that introduces the concept of the luxury SUV to the world.
Like the 747 and the floppy disk, the Range Rover represented an entirely new approach to product design. Sometimes, icons need time to cement their status and earn the title, but that wasn’t the case here. The curatorial team at the Louvre Museum in Paris instantly recognized the SUV’s importance. The Range Rover was the first vehicle ever shown at the Louvre, put on display as a masterpiece of industrial design.
But this wasn’t the only first for the world’s first luxury SUV. In 1972, two specially outfitted Range Rovers and a team of British military personnel crossed the Darién Gap, a stretch of dense jungle and swamp between Panama and Colombia.
The British SUV proved supremely capable time and again, making it the go-to choice for well-heeled adventurers. It won its class in the London-Sydney Marathon as well as the inaugural Paris-Dakar rally in 1979.
Such success did not go unnoticed in the broader pop-cultural realm. Range Rovers became a favourite of everyone from British royalty — including Princess Diana and Queen Elizabeth — to Hollywood royalty like Tom Cruise and sports royalty like Michael Jordan.
Art Imitates Life, and Life Imitates Art
In fact, it wasn’t long before the Range Rover’s high profile began to be reflected in film and television.
In Succession, HBO’s drama about billionaires behaving badly, Range Rovers are on screen so often they’re almost part of the cast. Whenever the family travels by car, it’s often in the back seat of a Range Rover. Whether it’s a convoy of Range Rovers pulling up to a private jet on the tarmac and waiting for the Waystar Royco CEO, or chauffeuring one of the Roy children around Manhattan, the British SUV takes center stage. In fact, the whole lineup of Range Rover vehicles — from the flagship, to the Velar, Evoque and Range Rover Sport — are on display throughout the series.
Why? Because the real-life counterparts to the Roys really do roll around in Range Rovers. The perfect balance of opulence and understatement, the SUV doesn’t draw attention like a Rolls-Royce — often exactly what the world’s one-percenters are looking to avoid. Yet, inside, a modern top-of-the-line Range Rover is similarly luxurious. In fact, in the late ’70s, Range Rover ran an ad with the tagline, “The Rolls of the Bush.”
Despite being able to fly under the radar in certain situations, a Range Rover is, unquestionably, a status symbol. In The Sopranos, when the ambitious young gangster Christopher Moltisanti (played by Michael Imperioli) becomes a “made man” he goes out and buys himself a Range Rover. The SUV shows that he has, quite literally, made it.
It’s a vehicle driven by gangsters like Chris, but also by heroes like Daniel Craig’s James Bond, who drives a Range Rover Sport — a newer addition to the Range Rover lineup — in the film Quantum of Solace. Of course, that wasn’t Bond’s first outing in a Range Rover; they featured in Octopussy with Roger Moore, as well as films starring Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan.
In music too, Range Rover is everywhere. From Jay Z’s “Dirt off Your shoulder” to Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love” and RZA’s “Cherry Range” and on and on.
It is, frankly, impossible to name another vehicle with so much cultural cachet and status. No other car appeals to heroes, adventurers, villains, rappers, families, celebrities and royalty alike. The reason for this is simple: the Range Rover is a spectacularly good machine and has been for 55 years and counting.
For more then five decades — and countless deserts crossed, rallies won, red‑carpet arrivals and chart‑topping shout‑outs later — the Range Rover finds itself with countless stories to tell. And, as it steers into its next chapter, it proves that true icons don’t just endure, they inspire every journey ahead.
