Automotive

Holland & Holland Range Rover is a luxury gun case

Holland & Holland Range Rover is a luxury gun case
The Holland & Holland Range Rover is based on the Range Rover Autobiography Black
The Holland & Holland Range Rover is based on the Range Rover Autobiography Black
View 7 Images
The Holland & Holland Range Rover is based on the Range Rover Autobiography Black
1/7
The Holland & Holland Range Rover is based on the Range Rover Autobiography Black
The Holland & Holland Range Rover comes with a bespoke gun case
2/7
The Holland & Holland Range Rover comes with a bespoke gun case
The Holland & Holland Range Rover has Holland & Holland badging
3/7
The Holland & Holland Range Rover has Holland & Holland badging
The Holland & Holland Range Rover has the gunsmith's scrollwork of the interior door handles
4/7
The Holland & Holland Range Rover has the gunsmith's scrollwork of the interior door handles
The Holland & Holland Range Rover has espresso leather
5/7
The Holland & Holland Range Rover has espresso leather
The Holland & Holland Range Rover Has a walnut veneer console
6/7
The Holland & Holland Range Rover Has a walnut veneer console
The Holland & Holland Range Rover has fully adjustable rear seats
7/7
The Holland & Holland Range Rover has fully adjustable rear seats
View gallery - 7 images

Luxury goods can be a bit of a vicious circle. You buy an expensive wristwatch and you need a safe to keep it in, and if you buy a brace of bespoke shotguns from a prestigious firm of English gunsmiths, you need a suitable set of wheels to carry them to the grouse shoot. Case in point is the Holland & Holland Range Rover, which is designed by Land Rover Special Vehicle Operations (SVO) to act as luxury ride wrapped around a specially engineered gun case.

The new 4x4 is part of Land Rover's plans for pushing further into the high-end luxury market and reflects the style of gunsmiths Holland & Holland, which is not the sort of place where you pick up a cheap .22 rifle for shooting rats in the barn. It's an upmarket firm started in 1835, holds a royal warrant, and specializes in bespoke double-barreled guns for people with double-barreled names. Not surprisingly, one of its off the peg fowling pieces costs £65,000 (US$103,000).

Based on the top-of-the-line Range Rover Autobiography Black, the car was specifically designed for Holland & Holland by SVO and is available in long and standard wheelbase versions. The style is very much that off the Autobiography, but is distinguished by the Holland & Holland Green livery, which extends to the the grille, mirrors, and bonnet vent. In addition, the door accents and the tailgate sport Holland & Holland badging.

The Holland & Holland Range Rover has fully adjustable rear seats
The Holland & Holland Range Rover has fully adjustable rear seats

However, Land Rover points out that the Holland & Holland Range Rover is not just a pretty face. Since it's targeted at the shooting crowd, it needs some serious off road cred if it isn't going to end up sliding ignominiously down the first wet, grassy hill, so it comes with off a choice of a 339 bhp diesel-powered 4.4-liter SDV8 or the 510 bhp petrol 5-liter supercharged V8 engine.

In the end, the Holland & Holland Range Rover is the sort of car where the rear seat is of more interest to the buyers than the front, so rather than highlight the cockpit, Land Rover is emphasizing the pair of rear individual, fully-adjustable seats complete with foot rest, flat screen TV, electrically-deployable walnut tables, and integrated USB charging ports.

The interior is marked by tan and espresso leather upholstery with Holland & Holland embroidery on the front seats, French walnut veneer taken from a single 150 x 50 cm (59 x 19.6 in) piece of walnut polished to look like an oil-finished gunstock. Carrying on with the gunsmith motif, there are hand-engraved Holland & Holland acanthus scroll on the internal door handles, gunstock checkering, and forend diamonds.

The Holland & Holland Range Rover comes with a bespoke gun case
The Holland & Holland Range Rover comes with a bespoke gun case

But the party piece is that the Holland & Holland Range Rover is a rolling gun case designed to hold a pair of Holland & Holland's guns. In the boot is a removable leather-trimmed aluminum loadspace cabinet sitting on a deployable loadspace floor made from aluminum and carbon composites finished with leather and wood veneer. The case is made for easy access without eating up luggage space and is reinforced, so it can also double as a seat for picnics or changing boots.

Land Rover claims that the Holland & Holland is the most expensive Range Rover ever offered by the company, with a sticker price of £180,000 (about US$286,000) and a limited run of 40 units per year to be built over a three-year period.

Source: Land Rover

View gallery - 7 images
4 comments
4 comments
Nairda
Probably not the concern of someone that might spend his time in the back seat and shoot from some place equally furnished. But for other kinds of shooting activities, one might finish with very muddy boots. Each to their own, but I would feel inconvenienced to change footwear no matter the car. Some kind of air extraction and/ or forced hot air over the feet might both dry the mud and keep the bog smell out of the cabin.
Sirmike
Wot! You don't even get a gun with it?
Derek Howe
I agree with Nairda, I wouldn't want my muddy hunting boots in a vehicles that nice. If I was rich, my hunting vehicles of choice would be a Raptor, and I would feel fine having muddy boots in it.
I guess this vehicle is for the billionaires who have their butler lay down a silk rug in front of the door, so they can take your boots off for you, and put a clean pair of shoes on you, then you can get in the back of it, while your butler drives you to the next field.
David Tobin
I met the director of H&H back in the 1980's and offered to introduce him to the marketeer who was running the luxury goods brand of Dunhill - he could not understand the relevance of the prospect and indeed was opposed to such a proposal to develop H&H in such a way.
At the same point in history Wood & Picket were building a four door conversion to the two-door only Range Rover V8 model. They also fitted auto transmissions (as the vehicle was manual only), converting to power steering, trimming in Connolly leather, fitting burr walnut trims, producing stainless steel body protection bars and bespoke alloy wheels. Land Rover saw none of this refinement as good or necessary for the brand at that time or even for years to come.
Now Land Rover is owned by Indian company Tata and before US company Ford. Holland and Holland is owned by Channel the French perfume house. What is the problem with the British maximising the commercial opportunities they are clearly so good at instigating. It is difficult to comprehend.