Land Rover Range Rover Sport Car Review

Facts At A Glance
Car: Range Rover Sport range
Prices: £44,895-£61,995 - on the road INSURANCE GROUPS: 13-17 [est]
Emissions: 243-353g/km
Performance: [V8 Supercharged] Max Speed 140mph / 0-60mph 6.8s [est]
Fuel Consumption: [TDV6] (urban) 23mpg / (extra urban) 37mpg / (combined) 30mpg [est]
Safety: Twin front & side airbags, ABS, ETC, EBA, DSC.
Dimensions: Length/Width/Height 4695/1915/1891mm [est]

SPORT BY NAME…

Our Rating: 8.3 / 10

There’s nothing quite like a Range Rover Sport. Jonathan Crouch discovers why.

The Range Rover Sport brings a dynamic, road-orientated sporting edge to Land Rover’s product range, slotting neatly between the family-orientated Discovery and the super-luxury Range Rover. It all but matches the best of its sporting SUV rivals on the highway while decimating them when tarmac turns to turf. In other words, a very accomplished car indeed.

Forty years ago, the iconic Range Rover was seen as a sporty, lifestyle-orientated product. But somewhere, at some time since, something changed. The Rangey became a plutocratic luxury saloon that also happened to have the SUV wherewithal to get you home if your country estate turned out to be halfway up a mountain. A car that raised a bemused eyebrow if you tried to hustle it down a twisting B-road. And a car that opened up a big gap on the more family-orientated Discovery that was Land Rover ownership’s next rung down. It was to fill this space that the Solihull brand introduced this Range Rover Sport back in 2005.

Despite the name, it was Discovery, rather than Range Rover-based, but none the worse for that, with a more tarmac-orientated remit that, astonishingly, still managed to incorporate all of the Disco’s legendary ability. The green lobby howled in protest, but customers who Land Rover would otherwise have lost to sporty SUVs like BMW’s X5 or Porsche’s Cayenne flocked into ownership. Four years on however, initially minor issues like the slightly utilitarian cabin and the lethargic entry-level 2.7-litre diesel engine were becoming more significant and both were duly solved by the improved version we’re looking at here.

Is it sporty? Well if it isn’t now, it’s never going to be. This car’s combination of air springs, active anti-roll bars and electronically-controlled damping have always produced a firm-on-the road experience justified by its extraordinary composure on the kind of back routes that would once have required sickbags if you were pressing on in a large SUV. Now it’s even better, thanks to fine-tuning of the chassis and an active damping system that, in conjunction with the air suspension, can make calculations about road and driving conditions over 300 times a second. There are also massive Brembo brakes that manage to bring this 2.5-tonne monster from rest to 100mph and back to rest again in just 15 seconds.

That’s if you’re at the wheel of the amazing 503bhp 5.0-litre V8 Supercharged Sport model with its awesome 625Nm of torque, the only petrol option on offer to Range Rover Sport buyers and good for 62mph from rest in just five seconds if you’re quick with the steering wheel paddles that many will want to control the slicker-shifting 6-speed automatic gearbox. That kind of performance is nice to have but in the real world, most buyers will end up behind the wheel of one of the two diesel models. The original entry-level 188bhp 2.7-litre V6 diesel option was rightly ignored by many buyers who, rightly concluding it was anything but ‘sporty’, went for the 272bhp TDV8. These days, the choice isn’t quite as clear-cut, with V6 diesel power now provided by an altogether transformed 243bhp 3.0-litre unit with 29% more power and 36% more torque that’s now probably the pick of the range.

Like the Discovery, the Range Rover Sport features Land Rover’s unique ‘Integrated Body Frame’ twin chassis technology, giving ladder chassis-strength for off roading and a unitary body for luxury saloon-style cruising. That being the case, we probably shouldn’t be surprised that this car is as good as it is off road but it’s still a shock to be able to be able to keep up with a GTi on a twisting country road, then veer off to conquer the kind of off road terrain you couldn’t even walk through.

It all comes courtesy of air springs capable of raising or lowering the car by over 10cm, a low ratio transfer case, hill descent control and, best of all, the brilliant Terrain Response System. You simply switch the rotary knob to whichever of the settings best describes the land you’re on – and leave the car to do the rest. There’s a general driving programme plus one for slippery conditions (dubbed ‘Grass/Gravel/Snow’) and three specialist off road modes (‘Mud and Ruts’, ‘Sand’, ‘Rock Crawl’). The improved system also includes a ‘Dynamic’ mode, designed to optimise performance on the road with sha