January
26, 2003
Jeremy Clarkson
Overfinch Range Rover 580s
Out of the farmyard and into the realms of the fantastic
There now follows a list of people I don’t want to have round for
dinner. Slobodan Milosevic. Victoria Beckham. Rose West. Cliff Barnes.
Keith Chegwin. Matthew Kelly. That simpering human rights lawyer who keeps
cropping up on Newsnight. Tom Hanks. And Patricia Hewitt, the cabinet
minister I sat next to on Question Time a week ago.
She was amazing. Every single time I drew breath to talk she started to shake her head and mutter, like she was a lunatic. Or a sparrow.
If she’s the best that female kind can offer a new Labour front bench, God help us.
Ordinarily I’d have put her from my mind three seconds after David Dimbleby said goodnight but she’s had a profound effect. Since the programme I’ve dreamt about her twice, and during the day I think about her all the time.
It’s long been argued that the human race is a genetic straight line, with tribesmen from the South Pacific at one end and the Basques from northern Spain at the other. All the rest of us — Negroes, Caucasians, Aborigines, Pygmies, the lot — we all fit in between. I’m no longer sure that’s the case.
I think the human race is defined at one end by Patricia Hewitt. But who’s at the other? Who’s her diametric opposite? The quest to find an answer has been keeping me awake at night but I think I found it last night in WH Smith on the concourse at Paddington station.
I understand that it’s not exactly cool sitting on a train thumbing through a car magazine. It’s like singing along to Glen Campbell on your Walkman, or squeezing spots. Or reading the Daily Mail. You just don’t do it.
But there are car magazines and there are car magazines and then there are specialist magazines for the Land Rover enthusiast. I bought one. It’s called Land Rover Owner International and it’s aimed, I think, at people who sit around in rural gun shops cleaning their fingernails with enormous knives and wondering if their next door neighbour’s head could be used as an umbrella stand.
Inside this month’s edition there’s a feature about four blokes who drove their Land Rovers off-road from the Scottish borders to Lindisfarne in a day. One of them was a chap called Karim whose ambition is to fit a Td5 engine into a Series 3 so that the drive from his place in London to his friend’s workshop in County Durham is less wearing. Er, Karim me old fruit, you could find a friend who lives a bit nearer.
At the moment he has four ex-military 109s, a long-wheelbase version, and an “88 incher”. Wow. I bet he’s a hit with the girls.
Anyway, with Karim I reckon I have found my magnetic north for the magnetic south that is Patricia Hewitt. I’d love to put them in a room to see what on earth they would find to talk about.
“Did you see that article in Land Rover and Land Rovermen about the best way of murdering someone, Patricia?” “No. More polenta, Karim?” “No. I only eat rabbit off the bone.”
This magazine is incredible. Not only does it provide genetic clues about the human race but there’s also a four-page feature on all the different boxes that can fit between the front seats of a Land Rover, plus endless advertisements for kick bars, A-bars, bull bars, full bars, roll bars and, of course, anti-roll bars. There is no piece of the Land Rover jigsaw left out.
Except one: the Range Rover. Oh, there are a few classifieds at the back, advertising early models, but editorially it’s as welcome as Dustin Hoffman and Susan George in Straw Dogs — Land Roverman’s favourite film incidentally. After The Wicker Man, of course.
The message is clear. Land Rovers are for working countrymen. People who know how to gut a rabbit for supper and garrotte a man for fun. Real men in other words, men in combat jackets, men in sturdy shoes, men who drink brown beer with twigs in it and eat pies, men who know that Range Rovers are for poofs.
I love Range Rovers and the Range Rovers I’ve always loved most of all are the old Overfinches.
Overfinch is a small Hampshire based company that has been tweaking and tuning double Rs for the past 27 years. I’ll never forget the first one I tried; a Range Rover Classic with a dirty great 5.7 litre Chevy engine under the bonnet. It sounded exactly like a hot air balloon. Quiet when you were cruising but when you accelerated there was this almighty roar from the burners. On a still summer night you could hear it 20 miles away.
I tried an Overfinch version of the Mark II Range Rover as well, and this was the same, only more so. On a drag strip, and I actually did this, it beat a 2 litre Ford Focus — even though it was towing a trailer with another Ford Focus on it at the time.
However, there was something wrong with it. I can’t remember what it was but I do recall the people at Overfinch writing to me after my review appeared saying that their business had dried up and that they were going to have to sell their children for medical experiments.
Mind you, my poor review, for whatever reason, was nothing compared with the body blow that came their way in 2002.
Early Range Rovers were always easy to improve. You only needed to do up some of the nuts properly. But how do you make a living out of making the new one more desirable. It already has the best interior of any car. And who’s going to buy it if you’ve thrown away the BMW V8 and replaced it with Chevy’s pre-Byzantine iron warhorse. Not me, that’s for sure.
Overfinch wasn’t deterred though, and this week it sent me its new car to try. It had the BMW engine, but this had been bored out from 4.4 to 5 litres and fitted with the crank from an M5. The result is a huge leap from 282bhp in the standard car to 380 in the Overfinch.
The results are alarming. It goes from 0 to 60 in 7sec — that’s more than two seconds faster than the standard car — and from 0 to 100mph 10 seconds faster.
But what about the torque, I hear you ask? If there’s one criticism of the standard car, it’s that the BMW engine is a bit gutless. Well, in the Overfinch you get 50 lb ft more of the stuff. It still feels a bit wet in the mid-ranges, but you get a close-ratio gearbox which acts so fast you’re in the power zone doing the ton before you have had much time to worry about something you don’t understand anyway.
What you can worry about is the steering. It’s standard, which means it’s designed to soak up bumps and ruts off-road. That makes it vague on the road.
This is fine in the standard car but when you have Ferrari F355 power under your right foot it can sometimes be alarming to have the wheel connected to the tyres by what feels like two pounds of well-cooked marrow. Overfinch has already fitted 20in low-profile sports tyres, thus spoiling the off-road ability, so there’d be no harm in tightening the steering up a bit.
I also have to question some of the interior changes. On my test car there was nearly £7,000 worth of hand-stitched this and polished that in the cabin, none of which made it noticeably better. It must be said, though, that my kids loved the £4,000 DVD player with screens in the back of the front headrests and I loved the 20in wheels that were big without being drug dealerish. I also loved the engine.
I know that £17,000 is a huge amount to spend on eight big pistons and a crankshaft you’ll never see but the results are spectacularly good fun. It’s like being in a tallboy that’s been fired from a steam catapult. You don’t have much control over where you’re going, but boy it’s a laugh.
So here’s what I recommend. When the Overfinch salesman starts trying to sell you burnished kick plates, put your fingers in your ears and hum loudly. But be sure to take them out again when he moves onto the big wheels and the big engine job. The seven-seat option looks interesting too.
The result will not help your car’s off-road ability one jot. But that’s okay. It puts you on the genetic map exactly halfway between Patricia Hewitt and the bloke up to his nuts in mud in Northumberland. Perfect.
VITAL STATISTICS
Model Overfinch Range Rover 580S
Engine type V8, 4930cc
Power 380bhp @ 5300rpm
Torque 376 lb ft @ 3400rpm
Transmission Five-speed automatic
Tyres 265/45 20
Suspension (front and rear) electronic air suspension
with variable ride height
Fuel 15.7mpg (combined)
Acceleration 0 to 60mph: 7.1sec
Top speed 140mph
Dimensions 4950mm length; 2191mm width; 1863mm
height
Price £60,000
Verdict Not one for the farmers but wide boys in
the City will love it