Range Rover Sport
Posted in Range Rover Sport on Sep 5th, 2007
The chavmobile, the lottery winner’s dream (surely you’d have more imagination - wouldn’t you?), the footballer’s wives taxi.
Unfortunately, despite the excellent provenance and engineering, this is all this is ever going to be. Too expensive to be used until they’re about 10 years old (when they’ll be great for the rich guys to mod!), and too big and cumbersome to be a real car this is another project which seems to have fallen flat.
The stupidly large petrol engines (with a combined fuel economy of 17.8 mpg/15.9l/100km!) do a phenomenal job of propelling over 3 tonnes of tank around at pretty impressive speeds, but are expensive, inefficient and in the real world - pointless.
The diesel engines are slightly better, but we have to admit that this beast is never going to be fuel efficient.
Off road it is actually surprisingly good, something that owners will tell you - they’ve seen the videos - they saw Clarkson on Top Gear, but would they let you show them what THEIR £50k would do when asked? Not a chance in hell.
On road, the Discovery chassis (yes, it isn’t really a rangie at all, it’s a disco you’ve just shelled out all that cash for - just with a few luxury bits added on) holds the road reasonably well, but that’s because of all the gizmos. As soon as the car is about to topple - the hydraulics prop it upright again. As soon as it wants to go straight ahead at the corner instead of around it, the traction control, EBA, EBD, ABS, DR etc kick in and do all of those things that are needed to be done because you’re driving a tank and not a car.
The question I would then pose would be: why not buy an M5 instead? If it’s only going to be a road car - the M5 is faster, smoother, more luxurious, more reliable, cheaper to run, safer to other road users and the occupants. It just doesn’t have the Sport Tractor’s ”ned factor” as my friends in Scotland call it.
Apparently Richard Branson threw one over the barriers on a motorway and was so impressed that his family survived he bought them for his key employees. The point he may have missed is that only a 9 foot tall tank like this would topple over the motorway barrier in the first place. False sense of security - the main reason why 4×4 owners are actually statistically MORE likely to be killed or seriously injured on the roads.
So with it’s uses being limited to wandering across a field at a gymkhana, or driving up the treacherous gravel path to the mock tudor mansion in Cheshire this is one car I would remove from the line up entirely if I was to be the new owner of Land Rover.
Guess what though - this is the one car which is keeping Land Rover profitable.
Long Live the Range Rover Sport (and the chavs who fork out for her!).
Find out what Clarkson thinks of the Overfinch RRS.
(If you want to review the RRS yourself, feel free to post a review in the comments - a couple of links are allowed. Reviews will be moderated as impartially as possible.)