The Range Rover Sport will be even
better off road, no doubt. But it’s what it does on road that’ll blow you away
The track is shrouded in fog, its surface
smothered with a damp, slick sheen. I’m driving the Audi RS4, a competent
machine in these conditions. Ahead of me is Jaguar-Land Rover chassis guru,
Mike Cross, in the new, camouflaged Range Rover Sport. We know just how little
grip we’re playing with and we’re slowly, tentatively picking up the pace. The
track flows quickly through a pair of tricky left-handers. I turn into the
first and the four-wheel drive Audi begins to tip-toe around its limits, to
ditch the small amount of initial over-steer in favor of a planted stance that
threatens under-steer. Ahead of me, unbelievably, Cross nudges the two-tone,
four-wheel drive Sport into over-steer. I wince, then aim the Audi straight at
him, knowing that by the time I get there he’ll already be in the barriers. The
Range Sport’s body rolls a little, the air suspension compresses over the right
rear wheel and as it all settles and the Range Sport assumes a good 25 degrees
of slip, there’s a forty rip through the air: Cross is back on the throttle,
deploying the supercharged V8’s 510PS to power through the bend. He’s getting
away from me, dammit, and he’s doing it in a power-sliding SUV!
All this is completely non-scientific, of
course, but it does give credence to Land Rover’s claim that the Range Sport is
the most dynamic Land Rover ever built. It combines, so the engineers say, one
small step for off-road prowess with one giant leap for on-road performance.
The secret? Cross says it’s all down to just eight millimeters. More on that
later.
Ahead
of me is Jaguar-Land Rover chassis guru, Mike Cross, in the new, camouflaged
Range Rover Sport.
A week or so earlier and I’m at Land
Rover’s Gaydon HQ to see the Range Sport naked for the first time and interview
the man behind its sleek looks, Gerry McGovern. McGovern has been pivotal to
Land Rover’s renaissance: the radical Evoque is now the fastest-selling Land
Rover in history with 1,50,000 units and counting, while any lingering
suspicion that the Range Rover would wither post-BMW and Ford is firmly snuffed
out with the new model.
Radical crossover? Tick-mark. Reinventing
an icon? Tick-mark. The Range Rover Sport knew the game was up and handed its
keys to Gaydon security a while back now. When it made its début in 2005, the
Range Sport brought sportiness to Land Rover for the first time, but insiders
will reveal political pressures stifled it, that some were fearful of
distancing it too far from its big brother, while others worried it could
cannibalize sales, “stealing the crown jewels”. Road testers might say it was
too cramped inside, too heavy, too dynamically wayward. That 2012 saw this
flawed, heavy, handicapped model limp heroically to its second ever best sales
of 56,000 says something for the potential of a less compromised car.
“It’s still got presence,” says McGovern,
“but it’s a bit pinheaded, a bit quirky. I couldn’t tell the difference from
the Range Rover at first. The new car needed to be revolution, not evolution; I
was thinking more of the Evoque and Range Rover than the old Range Sport during
the design process.”
A
week or so earlier and I’m at Land Rover’s Gaydon HQ to see the Range Sport
naked for the first time and interview the man behind its sleek looks, Gerry
McGovern.
See the Range Rover Sport parked between
those two book-ends of the Range Rover line-up and McGovern’s vision
crystallizes: stateliness of Range Rover infused with sportiness of Evoque.
It’s tauter, more dynamic, more cohesive than before, but still unmistakably
Range Rover.
A completely different starting point
helped, both for engineering and design: the outgoing Range Sport was based on
the Discovery’s T5 ladder-frame chassis with a steel body-shell, its wheelbase
cut-and-shut to service the new role. “The rear wheels are in the wrong place,”
points out McGovern, “and the rear overhang is too long”. The incoming car is
based around the new Range Rover’s aluminum monologue, though overall it’s 75
per cent new. Versus its predecessor, the Range Sport’s wheelbase is 178 mm
longer and it’s four mm lower and 62 mm longer than before.
“It’s a derivation of the Range Rover
architecture,” explains McGovern, “but we’re not constrained by it. We wanted
killer volume and proportions for it to look dramatic, grounded and powerful.
There are dynamic lines, tension, a higher belt-line and more attitude, but
we’ve retained the clamshell bonnet, floating roof, continuous waistline and
the approach and departure angles.
“The
rear wheels are in the wrong place,” points out McGovern, “and the rear
overhang is too long”.
“The Evoque is more cab-forward and the
Range Rover is upright. But the Range Sport is more dynamic, it paws like a
powerful animal – look how the line of the A-pillar runs straight towards the
Centre of the front wheel hub.”
Every element pulls its weight: the
elongated head- and tail-lights that draw your eye into the center of the car
and offset the longer wheelbase, the swept up rear that keeps a sense of
movement flowing and, gasp, the vent on the wing that’s no longer functional.
“I’ll make no apology for that,” says McGovern. “It makes the car more
interesting.” Instead, the engine now sucks air through the shut-line between
clamshell bonnet and wing and the increased wading depth means hardcore
off-road types are less likely to need a snorkel – though they’ll struggle to
fit one if they do.
Inside, the sportier theme continues: you
sit significantly lower than in the Range Rover, the center console is more
rakishly sloped, the steering wheel smaller and a Jag F-type-style gear-stick
replaces big brother’s rotary dial. Instrumentation is reduced by 50 per cent
compared with the 2005 Range Sport, giving a more driver-centered feel. It
feels sportier, but it’s more practical too: there’s 24 mm of extra legroom in
the back, plus there’s the option of a third row of +2 seats, despite the
rakish roof. This necessitated two ice-cream scoops to be spooned out of the
rear headlining, so grown adults might appear primed for a pudding-bowl haircut
if you force them back there, but, says Land Rover, typically proportioned
14-year-olds will travel in comfort.
All of the above gave the engineering team
quite some promise to deliver on, compounding the pressure to up the ante over
the outgoing model. After all, the previous Range Sport could only be
considered sporty in comparison with its epically unsporting big brother, not
rivals.
It
feels sportier, but it’s more practical too: there’s 24 mm of extra legroom in
the back, plus there’s the option of a third row of +2 seats, despite the
rakish roof.
It starts, then, with that all-aluminum
monologue, which takes 420 kg out of the kern-weight when you compare
like-for-like TD V6 diesels. So the new Range Sport is lighter, which helps
agility, but it’s also stiffer, which makes it easier to tune for dynamic
precision – think of it as the old car’s suspension playing Chinese whispers
with its body, while the new one communicates crystal-clear via Bluetooth.
