The Range Rover is a 4x4, mid-size off-road vehicle series produced from 1970 to 1996 – initially by the Rover (later Land Rover) division of British Leyland, and latterly by the Rover Group.

The first generation of vehicles produced under the Range Rover name, it was built as a two-door model for its first 11 years, until a four-door also became available in 1981. The Range Rover then successfully moved upmarket during the 1980s, and remarkably debuted in the U.S. as a 17-year old model at the 1987 Los Angeles Auto Show.

Availability of the two-door version was restricted from 1984, but it remained in production for some markets until 1994, when the second generation was launched. From that moment, Land Rover rebranded the original model under the term Range Rover Classic, to distinguish it from its new P38A successor, when the two were briefly built alongside, and applied the name retrospectively to all first-generation Range Rovers.

Although formally superseded by the second generation Range Rover, starting in 1994 – both the successor and the more affordable first and second series of the Land Rover Discovery were heavily based on the original Range Rover's chassis, drive-train and body-structure, which in essence lived on until the third generation Discovery arrived, and its mechanical blood-line ended with the replacement of the Mark 2 Discovery after 2004.

In early 2020, the 26-year production run of the original Range Rover was counted as the twenty-seventh most long-lived single generation car in history by Autocar magazine."

Rover's Land Rover Series I launched in 1948 had been designed to be cheap, simple to manufacture, and suitable for hard work in rural terrain, with minimal concessions toward comfort. Rover shortly realised that a market existed for an off-road capable vehicle with more amenities. In 1949 the Land Rover estate car was released, with a coach-built wood-framed body by Tickford. However, the high price of adding such car-like features as seven seats, floor carpets, a heater, a one-piece windscreen resulted in fewer than 700 being sold before the model was dropped in 1951.

In 1954 Land Rover launched a second iteration estate car, this time aimed at the commercial user who needed an off-road vehicle for carrying passengers without car-like comforts. Based on the commercial variant of the Land Rover, it had seats fitted to the load space and windows cut into the sides. While available with features such as an interior light, heater, door and floor trims and upgraded seats, the estate car retained the base vehicle's tough and capable suspension – as well as its mediocre road performance.

By the late 1950s Rover had become convinced a market for a more comfortable 4x4 existed in areas such as Africa and Australia, where ordinary motorists faced long journeys on unmade roads that called for four-wheel drive and tough suspension. In 1958 the first of the "Road Rover" development cars was built. Combining the Land Rover's tenacity with the comfort of a Rover saloon car, it featured a Land Rover chassis and running gear clothed in a functional estate car-like body. It never made it into production.