The Rise Of The Luxury SUV Limousine

0 Comments | 31 Jul 2023

A luxury chauffeur service is about providing the ultimate door-to-door experience, allowing you to enjoy a ride in comfort and arrive at your destination with sophistication and gravitas.

With that in mind, we offer a wide range of incredibly refined vehicles with a reputation for excellence and luxury, such as the innovative Mercedes S-Class range of luxury saloon cars.

For a long time, the luxury saloon has been the last word in executive comfort, but at the same time, there has been a slow but noticeable shift in the needs of luxury passengers towards a more rugged and understated type of luxury vehicle.

Luxury 4×4 off-road vehicles such as the Range Rover Vogue are part of a new generation of luxury transportation, but the story of how a vehicle marketed to climb every mountain and ford every stream became a byword of stealth wealth is one that spans nearly five decades and several generations of business leaders.

A Car For All Reasons

The original Range Rover was first produced in 1969 by the Rover division of British Leyland as the car made for all reasons after the very specifically rugged and dependable Land Rover Series III. 

Despite people initially being uncertain that British Leyland could make a car for everyone, Rover actually managed to pull it off and make a car that was designed to be off-road but was just as fantastic on the road as well. 

It could reach 100mph during a time when even a lot of saloon cars of the era struggled at that speed, its handling credentials were excellent with hydraulic disc brakes, four-speed dual-range gearbox and an excellent handling profile despite its inherently high ground clearance.

The original intention for the Range Rover was for it to be primarily a utilitarian car, designed for jobs and people who needed the four-wheel drive capabilities, alongside a few outdoor hobbyists.

However, what was somewhat unexpected is that this somewhat basic vehicle designed to be washed down with a hose and without a four-door version until 1981 became very popular in the luxury market.

Specialist modification companies and later Land Rover themselves would eventually modify the Range Rover to have leather seats, carpeted floors, wooden trip and leather seats, but the fact it was successful amongst the aristocracy despite this was a portent of what was to come.

Eventually, the Range Rover marque would move away from its utilitarian roots entirely after the Range Rover Classic was discontinued in 1996 after 36 years of production, although the Land Rover Discovery and the redesigned 1994 Range Rover shared a lot of its influence.

However, between 1985 and 2008, the ownership of Land Rover and thus the Range Rover brand changed hands four times, and between British Aerospace, BMW, Ford and finally the Tata Group, it took a long time for one of the pioneers in luxury off-road vehicles to capitalise.

Ironically, 2009 was the perfect time to go all-in on luxury.

The Rise Of Subtle Luxury

The mid-2000s was arguably the peak of the era of the limousine, with its elongated bodywork and separation between the passenger and the driver, particularly in the more ostentatious stretch limousine models popular for social functions and business meetings during that time.

By 2009, with the world gripped by a global financial crisis, the image of the executive heading to meetings in a very visible highly luxurious car became something of a faux pas for a while, and whilst the luxury market never went away, by the 2010s it had changed considerably.

With profits falling and losses accruing for many businesses, luxury transport was one of the first budget lines to see cuts for a few years, with journeys originally taken with a private chauffeur instead completed using a ride-sharing service.

This would change by 2013, but with it would come a significant change in the priorities of the executive traveller.

Whilst a long-wheelbase limousine was preferred previously, many business leaders increasingly moved to a much wider range of luxury executive SUVs, which provided comfort, safety, security and additional features whilst also being more discreet.

Whilst it would take until the 2020s for the term “stealth wealth” to reach the popular zeitgeist thanks to the television show Succession, it is also the perfect term to describe the reason why SUVs started to take ever-increasing shares of the luxury transportation market, mostly from the stretch limousine.

Between 2013 and 2023, stretch limousine use fell 90 per cent, with a large portion of that former market share taken by luxury SUVs and a wide range of saloon cars.