Monday 19th October 2009

Driven: Range Rover Sport Supercharged

503bhp V8 powered Rangie gives Riggers the giggles

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If you are in the mood for a bit of a giggle, and you happen to have a brand-new Range Rover Sport Supercharged to hand, here is a surefire way to amuse yourself. Fire it up, take it to the nearest traffic light-festooned dual carriageway and wait for a superbike - any sort will do - to appear beside you.

While you wait for the lights to turn green, pop the Rangie into neutral and give the new 5.0-litre supercharged V8 a blip, while attempting to stare out the chap (or indeed chappess) on the bike. It will make what follows all the more hilarious.

When the green light does appear, squeeze the accelerator pedal as hard as possible, and hold on tight. Because you are about to launch 2590kg of SUV forward at an alarmingly rapid rate.

What allows you to do this is the new 5.0-litre supercharged V8, which delivers exactly the same 503bhp as it does when it’s fitted into the Sport’s sleek cousin, the Jaguar XFR. In numeric terms, the Rangie Sport will lunge to 62mph in 5.9secs and, although the superbike will be well ahead of you by then, the rider will have had a nasty shock. After all, the old 4.2 Range Rover Sport - which had only 385bhp to call upon - took 7.2secs to reach 60mph according to Autocar’s road test.

Aside from the storming new engine, the latest Range Rover Sport has received a gentle restyle. Among the most notable changes are new front and rear light clusters, a smart new grille and new-style alloys. Inside the old, rather Tonka Toy-esque interior has also been given a makeover. Gone are the over-chunky plastics, replaced by a smoother, more sophisticated leather-and-wood look. The overall effect is to soften the edges of what has always been a rather brash, overblown design. The Range Rover Sport has finally grown up.

It wouldn’t be anywhere near as appealing without that stunning new engine, however. In combination with the smooth, intuitive six-speed ZF gearbox (complete with steering wheel-mounted shifts), the big V8 makes either cruising or lunging about the countryside a real pleasure.

The handling is less spectacular. Despite the best efforts of Land Rover’s chassis engineers, there’s only so much you can do with a 2.5-ton SUV. There’s plenty of grip, but body roll, pitch and yaw are ever-present companions if you tackle a twisty road or a roundabout with any gusto.

The steering is also particularly weird. Much as in the Sport’s baby brother, the Freelander, the steering is hyper-reactive just off the straight-ahead. The result is a razor-sharp turn-in, but a curiously vague feel to the helm once the car is settled in to a corner. It also means a slightly nervy attitude in fast motorway cruising.

So, the new Range Rover Sport has grown up a little. But in supercharged form it is most definitely game for a laugh. It’s smooth, refined and hilariously quick. You’ll have to have deep pockets to find it funny, though: we averaged 14.4mpg over a weekend and 600 miles or so, and you’d have to fork out £61,995 to get hold of one. That’s XFR territory and, to be honest, we’d rather buy an XFR, and beat the superbike away from the lights, rather than just give it a nasty fright.

[tuffer]

You forgot to select "Drive" so you would of in fact looked pretty silly sat at the lights going nowhere!