It’s miserable outside. Cheer yourself up with an all-weather SUV...
Comfortable, desirable and with the traction and power to monster low-grip conditions, a fast 4x4 is the perfect all-weather luxury car.
Luxury SUVs
Range Rover (L405)
There’s a brand-new Range Rover on sale, only the fifth all-new model in the car’s history. It’s superb, but so too is the previous car, the L405. Capable of hauling your family to the Alps in sublime comfort one week and crossing Scotland off-road the next, this Range Rover is the ultimate do-anything all-rounder. The D300 and D350 diesel sixes, introduced in 2020 for the last two years of the car’s life, are brilliant – circa £75k buys an approved used 70-plate D350 with 18,000 miles on clock. Reliability can be patchy so a warranty is worth its weight in gold.
Bentley Bentayga
Bentley was struggling just a few years ago, when a dated range and crippling R&D costs saw it post eye-watering losses. But the Bentayga SUV, which draws heavily on the Audi Q7, carried the company, accounting for a huge chunk of sales and dragging it back to record profitability. Heavily revised in 2022, approved-used values start at £80k for an early car. Choose between the W12 engine (fabulous but thirsty), a petrol V8 and the brilliant but short-lived diesel.
Rolls-Royce Cullinan
Hugely controversial, such is the popularity of luxury SUVs globally that Goodwood had little option but to create the slabby and imperious Cullinan. It’s a brilliant car, assuming you’ve the required wealth. But then, for a minimum spend of £250,000 second-hand, so it should be…
Utility 4x4s
Land Rover Defender
The trickiest sequel in history, masterfully handled. There’s nowhere the original Defender can go that the new one can’t, and yet this is the comfortable, motorway-capable all-rounder the original never was. Choose from 90 or more practical 110 versions, and diesel, petrol and PHEV powertrains. Approved used cars start at just under £50k for a D200 90. £60k buys a 110.
Mercedes G63
Completely transformed for the version that went on sale in 2019, the G-Class – like the Defender – went from being a car you bought with your heart and then regretted to one that really worked. The 63 is huge fun, and no longer an accident waiting to happen when driven swiftly, but the 350d (from £110k for a 60,000-mile, 2019 car) or 400d diesels are better cars. Early V8 G63 prices start at £130k.
Land Rover Discovery
The Discovery’s popularity was clobbered by the arrival of the infinitely cooler Defender 110 but the Disco’s a hugely overlooked all-rounder. Not sporty but awesomely comfortable, its interior space and sheer versatility will suit big families down to the ground. Never cheap, early four-cylinder cars with high miles are out there for sub-£30k. £35k buys a sub-50,000-mile example with a 12-month Land Rover warranty.
High-performance 4x4s
Lamborghini Urus
Not the first Lamborghini 4x4 (that was the crazy LM002) but the one that underpins the modern firm’s finances and has done since its inception. Awesome styling and a blast to drive, prices start at around £185k for a high-mileage example.
Porsche Cayenne Turbo
The car that proved 4x4s didn’t have to drive like tractors, the Cayenne came of age with its third-gen reboot, in 2017. Turbo prices start at just north of £40k. £70k buys a low-mileage, one-owner car through Porsche’s pre-owned scheme.
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