Luxury goods can be a bit of a vicious circle. You buy an expensive wristwatch and you need a safe to keep it in, and if you buy a brace of bespoke shotguns from a prestigious firm of English gunsmiths, you need a suitable set of wheels to carry them to the grouse shoot. Case in point is the Holland & Holland Range Rover, which is designed by Land Rover Special Vehicle Operations (SVO) to act as luxury ride wrapped around a specially engineered gun case.
The new 4x4 is part of Land Rover's plans for pushing further into the high-end luxury market and reflects the style of gunsmiths Holland & Holland, which is not the sort of place where you pick up a cheap .22 rifle for shooting rats in the barn. It's an upmarket firm started in 1835, holds a royal warrant, and specializes in bespoke double-barreled guns for people with double-barreled names. Not surprisingly, one of its off the peg fowling pieces costs £65,000 (US$103,000).
Based on the top-of-the-line Range Rover Autobiography Black, the car was specifically designed for Holland & Holland by SVO and is available in long and standard wheelbase versions. The style is very much that off the Autobiography, but is distinguished by the Holland & Holland Green livery, which extends to the the grille, mirrors, and bonnet vent. In addition, the door accents and the tailgate sport Holland & Holland badging.
However, Land Rover points out that the Holland & Holland Range Rover is not just a pretty face. Since it's targeted at the shooting crowd, it needs some serious off road cred if it isn't going to end up sliding ignominiously down the first wet, grassy hill, so it comes with off a choice of a 339 bhp diesel-powered 4.4-liter SDV8 or the 510 bhp petrol 5-liter supercharged V8 engine.
In the end, the Holland & Holland Range Rover is the sort of car where the rear seat is of more interest to the buyers than the front, so rather than highlight the cockpit, Land Rover is emphasizing the pair of rear individual, fully-adjustable seats complete with foot rest, flat screen TV, electrically-deployable walnut tables, and integrated USB charging ports.
The interior is marked by tan and espresso leather upholstery with Holland & Holland embroidery on the front seats, French walnut veneer taken from a single 150 x 50 cm (59 x 19.6 in) piece of walnut polished to look like an oil-finished gunstock. Carrying on with the gunsmith motif, there are hand-engraved Holland & Holland acanthus scroll on the internal door handles, gunstock checkering, and forend diamonds.
But the party piece is that the Holland & Holland Range Rover is a rolling gun case designed to hold a pair of Holland & Holland's guns. In the boot is a removable leather-trimmed aluminum loadspace cabinet sitting on a deployable loadspace floor made from aluminum and carbon composites finished with leather and wood veneer. The case is made for easy access without eating up luggage space and is reinforced, so it can also double as a seat for picnics or changing boots.
Land Rover claims that the Holland & Holland is the most expensive Range Rover ever offered by the company, with a sticker price of £180,000 (about US$286,000) and a limited run of 40 units per year to be built over a three-year period.
Source: Land Rover
