Range Rover is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. Since it was introduced the market, it became a benchmark for luxury off road vehicle. Every new Range Rover offered new technologies to market and also a new page for luxury. Actually Range Rover is popular for its luxury and it design. Even though the current model was introduced in 2002, it is still one of the best looking SUV on market.However the German competitors did not watch while Range Rover was getting stronger with each new model and they introduced SUVs to compete with it. Of course, they could not create the same impact but Range Rover’s market share was eroded.
Especially with new Touareg, Range Rover became less sophisticated. VW put every kind of technology into Touareg and new Porsche Cayenne. I know that they cannot manage the same performance in off road conditions like Range Rover but they are not bad anymore. However they are not Range Rover! This is one of the key element of Range Rover, its brand. Without that brand, they cannot sustain their market against Germans. 
Recently Range Rover made some changes in interior and in engines. Now it will be offering a new 4,4lt V8 diesel engine, I hope this will be lighter than the 3,6lt V8 diesel which was contributing the car to dive every time you brake. And new eight speed auto transmission for better fuel economy
These are the normal news for automotive but the interesting point development is the pointless gear knob. They replaced the gear lever with Jaguar’s gear knob to create a more luxury environment and turn many drivers crazy! Because, when you drive your three tonne Range Rover off road, sometime you have trouble to go forward. That’s normal with this weight, therefore you need to go forward and backward simultaneously to avoid unwanted incidents. In order to do this you need to select reverse and drive quickly. And this is easy with gear lever! However with this new luxury knob, I have no idea what will happen, when you have to go forward and backward in off road. Probably many drivers will complain as they cannot have same feedback like gear lever. 
From different perspective; Samsonite replaced its sophisticated locking technology with zipper without any reason! For many years, it was very easy to close your Samsonite luggage. Now they thought that, it was not good enough let’s annoy people and replaced with zippers! Now it is totally disaster to closing a Samsonite luggage through zippers and I never heard anyone who liked this thing. I guess they wanted to create better looking luggage by ruining its practicality.
This is the same with Range Rover, they want create a more luxury atmosphere by destroying the most practice thing!
Pictures are taken from;
Land Rover and Samsonite Websites
