LRM climbs aboard the fastest Land
Rover ever built (but what's it like off-road?)
There's a lot that's special about the
second-generation Range Rover Sport. The headline figures for the new model are
a 155 mph top speed and 0-60 mph in a bare five seconds. These will be what
catches the general public's imagination as the 510 PS 5.0- liter V8
supercharged petrol engine hogs the headlines. That'll be the vehicle that TV's
Top Gear chooses to burn rubber round an
abandoned airfield. But it's not the one the average British buyer will
eventually park on his drive. In the UK, as well as the rest of Europe, it's
the diesels that are the best-sellers - which means the Range Rover Sport is
seen as more than a performance machine.
There's
a lot that's special about the second-generation Range Rover Sport.
The V8 supercharged Sport 2 has got more
horses than a supermarket's frozen food department, but we Brits prefer the
beefier low-down torque of the oil-burners. Nowhere is this more apparent than
off-road, which I soon find out in my first drive in a pre-launch engineering
prototype. I've been invited to Land Rover's famous proving ground at Eastnor
Castle, Herefordshire, for a sneak preview of the second-generation Sport prior
to its launch at the New York International Auto Show in late March. And
Eastnor is synonymous with putting Land Rovers through their off-road
paces in the toughest environment possible.
This is the home of the vertiginous Gearbox
Hill, where generations of prototype transmissions have been reduced to
rattling boxes of broken cogs. It's a place where bottomless pits of mud, evil
axle-twisters and deep water test the ingenuity of Solihull's finest engineers.
Brilliant performers like the original
Range Rover, 101 Forward Control, Stage One V8 and every Defender ever created
have been tested to destruction here. So how does the Range Rover Sport 2 fare?
Very well indeed - and without the driver having to do more than point the
vehicle in the right direction.
The reason for this is the most
sophisticated Terrain Response system, ever. Terrain Response 2 has an
automatic setting that does the lot for you, with a dedicated team of sensors
detecting the challenge ahead and fine-tuning the engine, transmission and air
suspension accordingly. Put simply, it's awesome.
Brilliant
performers like the original Range Rover, 101 Forward Control, Stage One V8 and
every Defender ever created have been tested to destruction here.
For this drive I'm driving a TDV6 diesel
with a mere 8000 miles on the clock - but what miles! Jason Walters, Land
Rover's splendidly-named Off-road Capability Manager, tells me that this
particular car has been to Dubai for hot-weather testing in temperatures over
50° C, where it repeatedly climbed the biggest sand dune in the Middle East
(the 22 degree gradient Big Red) five times in high range.
Presumably the driver got bored after that,
because the V6 then went to the notorious Nurburgring for high-speed testing.
It visited Wales next, where it was put through a deep-water wading through
more than a meter deep. And now it's at Eastnor, driving through more very deep
water Happily the standard-fit aluminum under trays protect its vulnerable
belly from the unforgiving rocks hidden below the murky surface. Astonishingly,
the recommended maximum wading depth is 850 mm - which is 100 mm more than that
of the previous model.
To cut a long story short, the Sport 2
shrugs off every challenge. And it does so in comfort, even on axle-twisters
(which is what we used to call very uneven ground when all Land Rovers had beam
axles). Even in areas where extreme articulation is required, there isn't the
sort of pitch and roll you'd expect from traversing this kind of terrain.
Instead, the Sport 2 glides over tranquilly, because Terrain Response 2 has
just automatically disconnected the anti-roll bars. But that shouldn't come as
a surprise. As Jason says: "The challenge was to make it more capable than
its predecessor, both on- and off-road."
To
cut a long story short, the Sport 2 shrugs off every challenge.
It's this breadth of capability that is
imprinted in the DNA of every Land Rover ever built. It was there back in 2005
when I tested the original Range Rover Sport, in the dusty mountainous terrain
of the French-Spanish border. I was impressed by that vehicle then, just as I'm
impressed by this one now.
It was on that same test eight years ago
that I drove a Land Rover faster than I'd ever done before. It was, of course,
the original V8 supercharged and it scared me, truth be told. It's probably
just as well that when I head out on tarmac in the new V8 supercharged today,
I'm not allowed behind the wheel. Instead, Land Rover's Vehicle Engineering
Manager Lyn Owen is at the controls. And the twisting country roads around
Eastnor mean he can't legally take it to even half its top speed. The maximum
here is 60 mph, which - as I've mentioned - the V8 supercharged reaches in a
mere five seconds.
Ever since 1970, Range Rovers have been
proving wrong the Jurassic critics who accuse all Land Rovers of being slow.
The Sport 2 has just made any remaining dinosaurs extinct. But Britain's
congested roads aren't the sort of place to own a V8 supercharged anything,
unless you want to kill yourself, lose your license, or both. These cars will
be going abroad, where petrol is cheaper and roads quieter.
Whatever power plant you choose, you can be
assured of a comfortable on-road drive. The Sport 2 is not as sumptuous as its
Range Rover big brother, but you'd hardly notice - until it comes to squeezing
in the family. This Tardis-like cabin offers an extra 24mm rear legroom AND can
be ordered with a third row of two foldaway seats, comfortably seating a brace
of youngsters (or two smallish adults for short journeys). It's almost
encroaching on Discovery territory for passenger capacity but then, we don't
yet know what the next-generation Disco will bring.
The
Sport 2 has just made any remaining dinosaurs extinct.
This vehicle has a mere 2000 miles on the
clock - almost all of which have been accumulated during high-speed track
testing. Sadly, it will soon be on a one-way trip to the crusher. To Land Rover
enthusiasts it is a crime to see these pre-production vehicles destroyed, but
those are the rules these days. And nobody will be sadder than Lyn. "We do
get attached to our prototypes," he says. "After all, some of us have
been with them all over the world."
All too soon, these prototypes will be
forgotten. By the time you read this, the New York launch will have been and
gone, and spanking new models will be appearing in a showroom near you. But I
won't forget my first drive in these battered and abused prototypes. Because
without them, the shiny new cars wouldn't be possible.
