Range Rover to launch new models

Story: Emmanuel Adu-Gyamerah, Back from Porto, Portugal
THE latest model of the Range Rover vehicle is expected to hit the market in 2011 to commemorate the 40th anniversary launch of the vehicle.
Launched in 1970, officials of the company maintain the Range Rover is not an entirely new type of vehicle and neither is it a Land Rover or a conventional car.
According to Mike Gould, an experienced journalist, who had been writing about the Range Rover vehicles over the years, Range Rovers combined Land Rovers and conventional cars to create a whole new concept of a vehicle which is comfortable off-road as on-road.
That is exactly what the 2011 model of the vehicle, which has been named Range Rover Autobiography, seeks to achieve.
Even though the Range Rover Autobiography is yet to be outdoored, officials of the company say clients are yearning to buy the vehicle.
To commemorate the 40th anniversary, 700 out of the number of the 2011 model of the Range Rover have been specially made and named Range Rover Autobiography Black.
This brand of the 2011 model has been described as; “The ultimate incarnation of a motoring icon, the Range Rover Autobiography Black 40th Anniversary Limited edition is quite simply the last word in bespoke vehicles”.
To prove how versatile the Range Rover Autobiography is, selected journalists who report on the motor industry were assembled in Porto, Portugal to test-drive the vehicles before they were outdoored.
Through the sponsorship of the Range Rover Company and the assistance of the PHC Motors, the sole Ghanaian dealer of Land Rover/Range Rover vehicles, this writer had the privilege of being among four selected journalists from Africa, who joined their counterparts from other parts of the world to test-drive the new Range Rover both on the on-road and off-road in Porto and Douro Valley countryside in Portugal.
The other three journalists from Africa were selected from Kenya, Zimbabwe and Angola.
The Douro Valley, near Porto, with its unique features of mountains and steeps was considered a fitting area for the selected journalists to test-drive the yet-to be outdoored 2011 edition of the Range Rover vehicle.
Briefing the journalists before the exercise, Chief Programme Engineer of the Range Rover Company, Mr Paul Walker explained that the existing Range Rover was already the world’s best luxury all-terrain vehicle adding that “a wealth of enhancements to the Range Rover for 2011 means that the best is about to become even better”.
He stated that the company had added two more functions to its patented terrain-response for added safety and peace of mind of users.
Mr Walker said while retaining the incompatible 5.0-litre LR-V8 supercharge and naturally aspirated engines, the Range Rover for 2011 has additional LR-TDV8 super engine.
Already Land/Range Rover vehicles have been re-lanched in Ghana with the PHC Motors Limited as the sole dealers.
The Managing Director of PHC Motors, Mr Paul Kwabena Pepera said during the re-launch last month that it was heart-warming that 14 years after the dealership in the country was taken away from his company, it had won back the dealership.
The, company, according to him had spent one year undergoing intensive training, amassing a healthy stock of spare parts and investing in the latest Land/Range Rover diagnostic equipment, as well as assembling a team of experienced managers and technicians to handle the franchise.