Range Rover Sport TDV8 | Shed of the Week

Two decades after its launch, the Sport makes its Shed debut - a V8, too...

Have you ever had that feeling where you're absolutely sure you've done something but it turns out you haven't? Shed has had that feeling a few times, usually at wedding anniversaries when it's more often than not swiftly followed by a different sort of feeling on the back of his noggin.

Forgetting important dates isn't the problem this week, thankfully. Instead, it's the debut of a Range Rover Sport in SOTW. Shed can't believe he hasn't come up with one of these before, but unless he's done something very wrong with the filing system on his Amstrad that would appear to be the case. Ignoring the reputation of older cars wearing the Range Rover badge and the ominous fact that this is the 666th Shed of the Week he's scribbled, Shed is going to venture boldly forward and let the devil take the hindmost, whatever that means.

What Shed definitely does remember is the huge hubbub that greeted the reveal of the eye-catching Range Stormer concept at the 2004 Detroit show. The production L320 Range Rover Sport that came out a year later looked less Evoquey than the Stormer and more Discovery-y, which wasn't that surprising seeing as how it was built on a modified, shortened version of the Disco 3's monocoque/separate chassis platform. For PR purposes, the blending of two chassis designs meant it combined robustness and refinement in one vehicle, with the bonus (but less talked about) advantage of cost-reducing parts commonality. The Sport didn't include a third row of seats but the excuse for that was that you couldn't be Sporty with seven people, something the postmistress might argue about.

Shed is expecting to see a few comments about the car not sitting right, the powertrain being a bag of something your dog might do, the privacy glass looking rubbish and the screens looking worryingly vacant, all of which would normally come under the heading of fair comment. But for the life of him, he can't see much obviously wrong with this 3.6 TD V8 HSE, an exciting collection of letters and numbers suggesting power, hopefully some economy, and luxury.

We'll get on to the first two of those in a minute, but first let's acknowledge the luxury part. The tan leather that goes nicely with the blue paint seems to have stood up well over the car's 18-year/120,000-mile life. The vendors haven't included a pic of the driver's seat from the entry side, an omission which usually means bolsters relentlessly over-bummed into collapse by a big and possibly smelly farmer. Nor do we have a boot pic that usually means unmentionable stains, although the interior that we can see, while not mint, is certainly not unminty.

Right, it's time to heave up the bonnet. Lurking underneath is the Ford-developed, Dagenham-built 'Lion' 3.6-litre twin-turbo 90-degree V8 diesel pushing out 272hp and a very handy sounding 472lb ft, figures that gave this near-2.7 tonne beast a 0-60mph time of 8.6 seconds and a top speed of 130mph. Unfortunately, it wasn't a super-efficient unit, choking you in 2005 with 294g/km of CO2 and choking your wallet in 2025 with an annual tax bill of £760.

The 3.6's block and crankcase were CGI, which doesn't mean that they weren't real, but that they were made from relatively lightweight Compacted Graphite Iron. To Shed, compacted graphite iron sounds better than Compressed Powder Iron, but not by much. Actually, it was a reasonably reliable lump and with the right maintenance could run for 300k or more, the key phrase there being 'with the right maintenance’. Even if you were rigorous on that front, you could still end up with split intercooler hoses, EGR issues or faulty turbochargers. That last one could come about as a result of owners not realising there were two oil drain plugs, the second one being the turbo return line drain. Leaving that one untouched would eventually cause a buildup of sludge and premature turbo failure.

You'll certainly be hoping that not much goes wrong, as there isn't a lot of underbonnet space to work with. The location of the turbochargers on either side of the engine meant that you had to remove the subframe to get them out, hardly the work of moments. In search of an easier life, RR techies would often just hoick the engine out and charge you accordingly.

Valve covers were tough to deal with too, not just because they were made of crack- and leak-prone plastic but also because they were integrated into parts of the intake manifold, making them difficult to access and remove when they had started to crack and leak. And before you attempted that, you had to remove the injectors, another fraught experience that could easily go terribly wrong. Getting to the gaskets for the oil cooler/oil filter mounting brackets took a good while too because of their location underneath a load of other gubbins between the heads.

The six-speed auto bolted to this engine has a decent rep, though in a car that hasn't had regular fluid changes or that's been flogging around with horseboxes attached it can start to develop issues at, er, 120,000 miles. D'oh. There is zero info in the ad about servicing history, which is a shame. There's no visible towbar, either, but that doesn't mean it hasn't had one in the past. These Sports are good for towing mind, boasting a braked weight rating of 3,500kg.

Also on the plus side it's just had an MOT done, which came up with only a couple of advisories for slight play in an offside front wheel bearing and non-excessive wear to a nearside front suspension bush. Earlier MOT certs indicate that problems have been promptly fixed, suggesting (if not guaranteeing) a decent maintenance regime. Corrosion to the near-side rear suspension mount was sorted out in 2024, the offside one having been done in the previous year. Non-excessive rust to the sills and rear chassis legs was reported in 2023 and that hasn't popped up since, so the assumption is that that was fixed, too. Suspension was air. Shed thinks that adaptive dampers were available but he doesn't know whether this car has them. Can you see any suspension sag? Shed can't, but then again he can't see much of anything these days.

It could be yours for £1,999. What are you waiting for? Don't answer that, we haven't got time.

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