SPECIFICATIONS
Model:
Range Rover Sport Supercharged
Price:
from £57 495 (range starts at £34 495)
Engine:
4,197cc, V8 cylinders, 32 valves, supercharged, 390bhp at 5,750rpm
Transmission:
six-speed automatic, four-wheel drive
Performance:
0-100km/h in 7.2 seconds, top speed 225km/h, 16 litres/100km official average
The Range Rover Sport has brought the 4x4 debate, already fuzzy, into laser-sharp focus.
You want a sporty, fast, emotion-heightening drive? Logic says I wouldn't start from here if I were you. To make an agile, crisp, rapid and luxurious car from a 4x4's base is a remarkable feat of engineering, even more so than making a tail-heavy, rear-engined Porsche 911 into a paragon of driving delight and balance.
That it's environmentally disastrous is the price to be paid for forcing high performance out of something big and heavy. It gulps fuel at a fearsome rate, then wastes a whole lot more in heat as its huge brakes slough off all that mass-times-velocity.
Of course it makes no sense and I feel embarrassed driving such a car around local roads, into friends' driveways and, probably, over their lawns if I don't pay attention.
Land Rover has created this leviathan to fulfil two conflicting needs: the idea of a 4x4 (and all that entails for imagined off-road fantasies) plus pace and a decent driving experience.
Porsche (with the Cayenne) and BMW (with the X5) have also created 4x4s designed to salvage surprising on-road ability from an architecture of fundamental instability and have made a lot of money in the process. Each company made its reputation outside the realms of mud and all-terrain adventure but Land Rover is, and always will be, 4x4s only.
So what, exactly, is this Range Rover Sport? In isolation it looks like a regular Range Rover but, parked next to its loftier sibling, it is clearly lower and more aerodynamic. The key recognition point is the air vent just behind the front wheel arch, horizontal with two slats here, vertical on the Range Rover Massive.
The tailgate is a conventional one-piece lift-up item, too, instead of a two-piece with a downward opening lower half. That said, the rear window can be opened separately for access in a confined space.
Inside, you still sit high but not quite so high. The fascia is more car-like but the centre tunnel is still very broad to house all that engine and transmission metal. The annoying beep shortly after start-up, confirming that all systems are OK (why shouldn't they be?) is as found in the Discovery but the fascia cup-holders found in the regular Range Rover, complete with warning symbols as to their correct usage so Americans won't sue, are absent.
In fact, aside from the styling, the Sport is more closely related to the Discovery than to the full-size Range Rover. It shares the Disco's heavy but tough under-structure and its Terrain Response all-wheel drive, which tailors how much torque goes to each wheel according to the type of surface you're on.
It also alters the way the automatic transmission shifts and the height of the air suspension. Hardly anybody will use this feature but, like the shin pocket in a pair of combat trousers, it's good to know it's there.
Right now, though, I'm heading down the A24 through some pulse-quickening bends favoured by death-wish motorcyclists until the police got fed up with sweeping up the bits and had the road "narrowed" with cross-hatching.
The Sport is sticking like glue and it's hardly leaning at all, thanks to its Dynamic Response active anti-roll system. This uses electric motors to stiffen the anti-roll bars as cornering loads increase, so keeping the Sport level, but lets the bars soften again when the loads have gone to avoid the rock-roll motion that too-stiff bars create on straight, bumpy roads.
Learning curve climbed
It must scare the wits out of other drivers when they see such a tall and hefty car coming so quickly around a bend without leaning much, a state that subliminally suggests that it's having a major skid. It takes some nerve on the part of the driver, too, because it's hard to reconcile what's happening with what instinct tells you should.
But, with learning curve climbed, you can enjoy the surprisingly crisp steering and amazingly tight, tidy responses and revel in the distortion of your own built-in dynamic reference points.
True, the sportiest X5 or a Porsche Cayenne can evoke similar wonder, but the wonder is the greatest here because of that Land Rover badging. After all, unlike the others, Land Rover has never built sports cars or raced at Le Mans.
I haven't mentioned the engine. I should, because the Range Rover Sport comes with a choice of modified Jaguar engines, namely the V6 turbodiesel co-created with Peugeot and two V8s. The gentler, 4.4-litre V8 delivers 225kW but has hardly figured at all in customers' pre-orders, to the extent that Land Rover might not sell it in the UK after all.
The more interesting one is the supercharged 4.2-litre unit with 293kW on offer, making this the fastest Land Rover yet created. You pay an extra £7 500 (about R88 000) for the supercharged engine, for which you also get the Dynamic Response suspension as standard (it's an option on the others).
Weight prevents this effectively Jaguar XJR-engined SUV from being a total dragster but it still squirts away from rest with a vigour hard to reconcile with its architecture. Average CO2 emissions are 374g/km and it's hard to keep a clear conscience about that. It's another reason why such cars are best used out of cities, where there's more foliage to cope with the fallout.
So, profligacy apart, has the Range Rover Sport caused Sir Isaac Newton, once so sure in his laws of motion, to spin in his grave? Not quite. First, the Range Rover Sport still feels the monster it is when manoeuvring or negotiating tight roads.
Second, despite Dynamic Response's best efforts, it is unsettled and fidgety, the price paid for stiff suspension and those racy 20" wheels. A strand of today's car buyers is more concerned with style and image than ever before and, because nearly all cars work well enough, these buyers seem not to care about their fashion-victim status.
The Range Rover Sport is a brilliant example of giving the market what it wants, however absurd. Bling it on. - The Independent, London
The rivals
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This hardest-edged X5 produces 285kW from its V8, enabling it to reach a top speed of 245km/h and launch from 0-100km/h in only six seconds. It's more economical than the Range Rover Sport, too, but less capable off-road and makes fractionally more sense.
PORSCHE CAYENNE TURBO
The maddest 4x4 of them all produces 450bhp, has a 5.5sec 0-100km/h time and reaches, where feasible, 265km/h. It's also excellent off-road and no thirstier than the Range Rover Sport. The cleverness of the overall package is reflected in the price.
RANGE ROVER SUPERCHARGED (£67 000, about R784 000.)
This addition to the regular Range Rover line-up will reach showrooms soon, once the Sport has filled the public eye. It has the same power, less pace, more plushness and similarly surprising responsiveness.