2010 Range Rover Supercharged

[Jake]

I took the racecar over to Mach V on Friday evening so more cheater parts could be installed. The towing ball/mount I'm using is actually long enough to comfortably hook up the trailer. Turns out Land Rover tucks the hitch way under the bumper on these to allow for the best departure angle. Neato, but annoying. Thankfully mine works.

The backup camera is offset in the rear spoiler, and the viewing angle is garbage. It is impossible to see the ball when you are trying to hook up the trailer, and nothing is centered on the screen, so you end up just using the mirrors and guessing how far back to go before the trailer is either centered over the ball or you punch a hole in your nice painted bumper cover.

Thankfully, I am good enough at hooking up trailers now that I did not punch a hole in the bumper cover. It looks like some $50 aftermarket cameras can be wired up to the Land Rover wiring, and provide a much better angle of attack. May have to do that.

On the plus side, the camera is angled high enough to work very well as a backup camera when the car/trailer are hooked up. Very easy to see where the trailer is going beyond just the door mirrors. The advantage may go away when I move to an enclosed, but with an open... was pretty cool:



The tow to/from Mach V (got the car back last night) was uneventful. The Range Rover pulled everything incredibly well and I see why these are popular with the high-falutin' horse crowd. It is smoother, for the most part, than the F150 or Denali were. I suspect that is due to the full air suspension soaking up bumps/imperfections. I did not run the weight distribution bars because I lost one of the cotter pins, but will replace and use for future tows just to be on the safe side and help the rear bags out.

Big bumps do make the hitch clang around (due to that little bit of slack with everything hooked up), and you hear/feel the knocking because this is a unibody. It's annoying and can be a bit disconcerting, but is normal given the type of vehicle.

The supercharger not only helps the thing accelerate quickly, even with the trailer - it improves drivability as the power doesn't drop off between shifts. That was very annoying with my past tow vehicles, and power is seamless here by comparison.

My F-150 would automatically downshift when in tow mode and brakes were applied. The Range Rover does not do that, but I was using the "Command Shift" (aka BMW Steptronic) to downshift it as I approached stops. The Steptronic is very responsive and did help slow things down.

Overall, A++ would tow again.