Made some nasty enemies over the years or just like your family to be really, really safe? Land Rover has you covered with its latest creation, the Range Rover Sentinel.
Living up to the definition of sentinel, which means to watch over as a guard, the Sentinel is fitted with armoured plating that allows it to shake off 7.62mm high velocity, armour piercing incendiary bullets. Really nasty ones, basically.
Meanwhile it has enough lateral protection to survive up to a 15kg Trinitrotoluene (TNT) explosion and DM51 grenade damage, even if one is thrown on the roof or below the car. This is all thanks to a six-piece passenger cell made from high-strength steel and multi-laminated privacy glass.
Land Rover says the Sentinel is fully certified to VR8 standard as certified by QinetiQ, an independent organisation that once upon a time was part of the British Government’s Defence Establishment Research Agency.
The standard Range Rover Autobiography has been used as a basis instead of the long-wheelbase variant. But a number of revisions set it apart, including the ability to carry up to 650kg and tyres with run-flat inserts fitted to special alloys that allow the Sentinel to drive with a deflated tyre.
It’s also possible to escape from the Sentinel through a special Emergency Escape System located behind the rear seats in case the doors are blocked.
Bad guys will have to catch the Sentinel first, though. Underneath all that armour is a 340PS 3.0-litre V6 supercharged petrol engine mated to an eight-speed ZF automatic.
Stopping power comes in the form of 380mm discs at the front and 365mm at the rear, both ventilated and backed up with high-density pads for extra bite.
Optional extras are unusual for a Range Rover, to say the least. You can spec a siren, external speaker system so you can tell your assailants to get lost, bonnet fire suppression systems and emergency service lights. There’s also more usual things like exterior and interior colours to choose from.
Land Rover has designed the Range Rover Sentinel to look just like the standard car so there’s little hint as to what you are dealing with, unless you keep turning the siren on.
The Sentinel is the first armoured Land Rover to be fully engineered by its Special Vehicle Operations (SVO) division and is hand-built at its Oxford Road facility. It has a guide price under €400,000 and will be available to order in September 2015.
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