New wagon for the Fulham Farmers.

[RR pic]

ON A pale Gloucestershire evening, through the cracked, mullioned windows of a friend's drawing room, we watched people arrive for the supper party. One of those new Range Rovers pulled up outside. "Oh no, here they come," said my fellow guest, thick, ruddy fingers clamped around his whisky glass. "Bloody Fulham Farmers!"

The new Range Rover is going down only so-so in cow-pat country. Since its arrival at the end of September, there has been admiration, envy, surprise and some distaste. The bib-wiped front and rear looks have been attacked for being too like a London Metrocab. But then, as my sausage-fingered chum observed: "It is mainly Londoners who seem to be buying the thing."

Land Rover, the manufacturer, half expected such reactions. "We do have some die-hard customers who can be conservative," says a spokesman. Pre-production market research discovered that Range Rover owners, in particular, wanted the car's shape to stay the same. So when the designers set about creating a thoroughly new vehicle, they took "an evolutionary approach". They wanted people to look at the beast and recognise at once that it was a Range Rover.

Richard Larthe has "a few acres" at Brimpsfield Park, Gloucestershire. It is that hilly part of the kingdom between Gloucester and Cirencester where the Cotswold escarpment lifts steeply and, in its early excitement, plunges into sudden and sticky gullies. Larthe, who runs a shoot (pheasant and partridge), is thinking of having his own car stickers made: "Brimpsfield - real Cotswold mud". In the course of a season, he reckons to come across more than 50 Range Rovers. There was the day a group of eight foreign clients arrived in eight different Range Rovers. Behind them followed eight Land Rover Discoveries - for women and bodyguards.

Some people still hanker for the old Range Rover, - you poked a hose through the window and rinsed out the sheep dung

The Larthe view of Range Rover's new baby may be jaundiced by the fact that the model was announced mere days after he had bought a new old one. "Typical!" he laughs. "But I'm not a fan of the new Range Rover. They have plushed it up too much, making it more difficult to clean." Some country people still hanker for the original Range Rover, so simple you just poked a hose through the window and rinsed out the sheep dung.

It was in 1970 that Rover first produced a boxy, draughty, four-wheel drive machine designed by Spen King and the late David Bache. Customers were invited to pay almost £2,000 for what critics soon called a "Land Rover with cushions and ashtrays", and even three years later, in the Herefordshire village of my prep school, Range Rovers remained a curiosity. The father of a boy called Stevens had one, and to be frank we thought him a bit flash.

That attitude persists. Listen to John Phillips, 45, whose family has farmed on the eastern flank of Cirencester for four generations. "The new Range Rover is a great luxury, but too smart," he says. "I need a workhorse." Phillips, a pungent field sportsman, did briefly own a short wheelbase Vogue - he had crocked his back, and the Range Rover, with its upright seats and front legroom, was the only vehicle he could use without yelping in agony. But now he has a Discovery. It looks more like a country vehicle, and is cheaper.

Stani Yassukovich, former chairman of Cirencester Polo Club, says that whenever he sees a new car in a friend's drive he cannot help reflecting on the handsome poundage of horseflesh the same money could buy.

Back towards Cheltenham, the ice is starting to melt. Rupert Lowe, 37, farmer and financier, pooh-poohs the new Range Rover's "taxi" looks and high cost (£43,950 for the flagship 4.6 HSE) but he praises the engineering. "The new model is undoubtedly a better engineered tool," he says. "And it doesn't rattle." To accommodate conservative tastes, Range Rover is maintaining a limited production of its old design, now renamed the Classic. The company presses 80 Classics a week, but that figure will drop if Rupert is representative of his breed. From the wheel of a mud-spattered J-reg Vogue, he says: "When the time comes to change, I shall probably go for one of the new ones. There is no point buying a Classic. You might as well go second-hand."

"Too many electrics to go wrong in the new one"

In the village of Barnsley, where the great gardener Rosemary Verey holds sway with her secateurs, a flash of Epsom Green steel marks the arrival of Bernard Clarke and his new Range Rover, down from London for the weekend. Clarke, 38, an international lawyer, is "delighted" with his new toy, though he "wouldn't advise people to have a black one, unless they want to make themselves a few extra bob". His previous motor was a £65,000 Merc. It kept going wrong, so he switched allegiance and is pleased he did.

Sports day at Ludgrove, the Berkshire prep school which has managed to decant Prince William into Eton, is a good place to judge how the top-range motor manufacturers are doing. Fathers buff up their new motors and park on the edge of the cricket field for all to see. This summer term there were six Audi Avant RS2 estate cars (those 163mph nostril flarers engineered by Porsche). They outnumbered the Range Rovers and at day's end there was just one vehicle left on the field - a Range Rover, broken down.

Mark Heaton, a Gloucestershire parent whose number plate MFH 40 indicates his sympathies re field sports, test drove a new Range Rover but opted for a Classic. "Too many electrics to go wrong in the new one," he says, "and it looks so ugly. I'm sure it will grow on people, though."

Looks are not the sole consideration. The motorway crash last year in which a mother and children were killed (watched by her husband in the car in front) has harmed the old Range Rover's safety reputation. The new model is more solid. The fuel tank is embedded deep in the chassis - allowing, happily, more space in the boot for the £850 fridge. Christian Bozeat, of the Mayfair Land Rover dealership Stratstone, says the new Range Rover's automated air suspension sells a lot of vehicles, and the off-road controls are easier to operate. Individually-programmed ignition keys automatically adjust seat and wing mirrors if someone else has been driving the car. Bozeat, who says some of the cars he sells will rarely travel beyond SW3, is taking orders from Lexus, Jaguar and BMW drivers. Range Rover will need to remember that such urban customers can disappear on a whim just as easily as they arrived.

From Brimpsfield, meanwhile, comes the unmistakable groan of a stuck motor. A 20-yard wall of mud has claimed another visitor, and Larthe heads off to rescue his fourth new Range Rover of the week. "It is probably not the car, just the drivers," he concedes. The countrymen have given the new Range Rover the reception reserved for the stranger entering a rural pub late on a wintry night. The door squeaks, conversation halts, and the old boys at the bar turn with a stare. It could take some time before they give this fine machine the welcome it deserves.

Reply to Electronic Telegraph - et@telegraph.co.uk

Electronic Telegraph is a Registered Service Mark of The Telegraph plc