Exploring the Moab Desert in a 500bhp Range Rover Sport

Then again, they like to do things slowly here in Moab, Utah, deep in the US west. The nearby Colorado river is estimated to erode the nearby rock faces by one inch every 450 years and at times our pace hasn’t felt much faster.

We’re in Moab as part of Land Rover’s Experience Tours programme, a chance for Land Rover to demonstrate what its cars can do in one of the toughest off-road locations on the planet. With route names like Hells’ Revenge and Wipeout Hill, this is certainly not a place for the faint-hearted – YouTube is littered with footage from here of 4x4s coming off second-best to Mother Nature.

Although the Land Rover Experience officially enjoyed its 30^th anniversary in 2019, the company has actually been demonstrating its cars to customers on a more casual basis since the 1960s. Now though, if you buy a new Land Rover, you get given a voucher entitling you to a free Experience whether that’s a factory tour or driving at one of the firm’s off-road centres (there are 62 worldwide covering 91 countries). The experiences themselves can also be bought separately ranging from short taster sessions up to multi-day trips to Namibia, Sweden or our one in Utah. Prices start from £129 and can rise into the thousands. If you so wish and your bank balance allows it, Land Rover will even design a bespoke tour just for you.

“Our Experience events are a way of having our customers experience the cars in an extreme environment that’s also controlled,” says Rebecca Randall, Head of Global Brand Experiences at Land Rover. “They were never originally created as a marketing tool, but they’ve become a tremendous asset for us. We’re not trying to sell people a car, we just want them to experience the products we offer while having fun and they often leave as the biggest Land Rover ambassadors as a result.”

That’s really not much of a surprise either. The barren vistas around us are nothing short of jaw-dropping, but it’s the constantly highly capable displays by the Range Rovers and Discoveries that really take your breath away. Our glacier-rivalling speeds see us travel all of just 12 miles in a single day and all too often it’s faster to walk the trail than it is to drive, underlining its challenges.

As I edge slowly down towards the rock face ahead, our official Land Rover instructor Jim Swett, guides me inch by inch as the nose lifts up towards the next obstacle without a single graze. It’s very impressive stuff, but I’m under no illusions who is under control with my car though. I may be the one sitting behind the steering wheel, but Jim’s hand signals, telling me exactly which way to turn and how hard (or not) to press the throttle pedal, are invaluable.

No sooner is that downhill section finished than a seemingly vertical rock face lies ahead of us. When the first settlers came through here, this slick rock got its name for its super-slippery nature for cart wheels and horses hooves. Thankfully for our more-modern horsepower, that same rock is like ultra-abrasive sandpaper providing plenty of grip for our Pirelli Scorpion tyres.

But grip is one thing and the sheer laws of physics quite another. Tyre marks and paintwork gouges on the rocks show past less-fortunate drivers and as the rear tyres follow the fronts, I hear the revs rise on the supercharged 5.0-litre V8 as the car begins to take the strain. Is this one climb too far?

Perhaps. Our progress pauses and I hear one of the rear tyres start to spin on the rock beneath us. The incline means the bonnet fills the windscreen with just Jim’s hands showing above it. Then the spinning tyre stops and the dash-mounted screen shows that both the centre and rear differentials have locked into their maximum six-out-of-six settings. We slowly start to move forward again, inching our way up the slope.

“Nice job,” says Jim when we reach the top. “Generally speaking, a driver’s nerves often give in way before the abilities of the car but customers never leave these tours anything less than amazed at what the cars can do. Even if they already know that the cars are highly capable off-road, they don’t expect them to be quite this good at handling this kind of terrain.”

That’s especially so, when you consider that the cars we’re driving are completely standard. There’s no special off-road tyres or extra under-body protection, these Range Rovers and Discoveries are exactly as they drive out of the showroom.

Ironically, that’s often to the slight annoyance of some of the other off-roading community present in Moab who pride themselves on their adapted 4x4s or specialised buggies (known as ‘side-by-sides’) to get them further or tackle tougher slopes. Supersized tyres, pumped-up suspension and cut-down bodywork are so ubiquitous that I wonder if we might be the only people in a totally standard vehicle of any kind.

Not that I can take any of the credit for the off-road performance of our cars though. As we turn off the trail and back onto Tarmac at the end of the day, it’s the sheer flexibility of the Range Rovers and Discoveries that we’ve been driving accompanied by the expertise of our instructors that emphasizes their depth of capability.

Whether it’s slick-rock, sand or Tarmac, there are very few other cars on the planet that could do what we’ve done today and even less that could do it in this kind of comfort.

“Our brands are very experience-based and there’s no doubt that doing an Experience yourself will always have a strong impact than just being told what a car can do,” continues Rebecca Randall. “The world is changing and people are looking to do more experiences in life generally rather than just buying things, and we’re seeing that much more. It’s undoubtedly an area of growth for us for the future.” More experiences like this? Where do we join the queue?

You can find out more details on Land Rover’s Experience programme at: landroverexperience.com.