I'm driving a Land Rover LR3 through a bumpy, snaking North Carolina back-country trail, and the pucker factor is high. I negotiate a steeply banked turn and, suddenly, the near three-ton SUV is tilted so far over to the driver's side, if I rolled down the window, my elbow would probably scrape the ground. It sounds harrowing, but it actually isn't, once you understand the capabilities of this off-road machine. And that's exactly the point of the Land Rover Experience.
Swanky SUVs crowd America's roads and interstates. They look great, they make you look great and they can handle myriad treacherous driving conditions. Most, though, are never put to the test off-road. And that's a shame, because once you know how to handle yourself off the asphalt, you can exponentially increase the amount of pleasure you get from your SUV.
The Land Rover Experience is a great place to increase your off-road acumen. The old-school British automaker has two schools in the U.S. -- one at the Quail Lodge in Carmel, California and one at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina.
I opted for Ashville, and one perfect day this spring I found myself at the start of a heavily wooded trail on the spectacular Biltmore grounds. Before driving, an instructor briefs you on issues related to clearance (front, middle and rear) and advises on crucial dos and don'ts. Don't wrap your thumbs around the wheel because hitting a large obstacle could snap it back and snap your thumbs; do set your side mirrors down and in to observe side and rear clearance.
After that tutorial, my patient and extremely knowledgeable Army vet instructor took shotgun and we were off into the woods. Land Rover has carved, dug and crafted trails all over the mammoth estate to create dozens of different conditions and challenges. It's an amazing array, and the $800 all-day class (which includes up to three drivers) is the best way to experience it all.
You can pilot a Land Rover-provided Range Rover, Range Rover Sport, LR2 or LR3 on the course. I chose the mid-size LR3, which was completely stock (4.4-liter, 300-horsepower V8 automatic), save for a winch. Before I tangoed with the LR3 in the brush, my instructor helped me get used to two-footed driving (one on the gas and one on the brake). It was really awkward and herky-jerky at first, but once I got the hang of it, it gave me a lot of extra control.
After getting comfortable with the basics, we spent the next several hours bouncing, hopping and sliding through tough terrain. My instructor was a steady font of off-road information (e.g., be careful with water hazards, because people often throw things in to get traction and don't take them out) and he was always focused on Land Rover's eco-friendly Tread Lightly philosophy.
For me, the culmination of the class came when we crossed a deep, muddy stream. My instructor explained how to create a "bow wave" so that a minimum of water would immerse the car and its electronics. Too much speed, he cautioned, and you would outrun the wave, and not enough speed would mean the water swamps in around you. It was a fairly daunting feeling knowing I could submerge and trash this $50K SUV, but my expert training got me across with only a bit of mud sticking to the LR3.
I had been in some tough situations off-road before (crawling over boulders in a burly Jeep Rubicon and scaling off-season ski slopes in an SUV), but during those times I was basically winging it. The Land Rover Experience made me realize how much I didn't know, and how much that knowledge could increase my abilities behind the wheel off-road.
The course is definitely more of a lecture than a four-wheeling free-for-all. And that's a good thing. My only suggestion would be to schedule your trip to coincide with a little bad weather. Rain will definitely magnify the difficulty factor and give you a more challenging and satisfying experience.
More info: www.landrover.com/experien/
Photo courtesy the Land Rover Experience
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