Sporty chairs aren’t just reserved for front-seat occupants either. The steering column electrically adjusts through a vast range and the seats have 16-way adjustment.
There’s no denying that the driving position remains strong, however, with plenty of room for occupants both front and rear. Land Rover’s high-set driving position is unchanged by buckets that, ultimately, look more supportive than they are.
They get them in the deeply sculpted shapes of the seats, which scream ‘sporty’ in a way that’s slightly out of kilter with the fact that you’re looking horizontally across at them, not down on them, when you open the door. No single design revision looks over the top in isolation, but on a performance car the sheer size of the Sport they combine to create an impression of genuine menace.įor the SVR, the differences are slight but sufficient to give the Sport another lift – albeit one aimed squarely at those looking for performance cues rather than luxury ones. Otherwise, SVO’s efforts have largely gone on retuning the interlinked springs, magnetorheological dampers and active anti-roll bars offered on the regular Range Rover Sport.īesides the SVR badging, the styling identifiers consist of enlarged front air intakes on a revised front bumper, new black grilles on the nose, bonnet and front wings, a new roof spoiler and a rear valance that includes a rear diffuser and quad tailpipes. The changes to the make-up of the SVR’s height-adjustable suspension are limited to firmer bushes, new pistons for the air springs, bigger wheels and tyres and, on cars such as our 22in wheel-shod test example, wider axle tracks.Īdditionally, with those optional wheels come the first performance road tyres to be offered on a Land Rover product, in this case Continental ContiSportContact 5s.
RANGE ROVER SVR PLUS
Plus you still get the Range Rover Sport’s low-range transfer case and Terrain Response 2 traction control system, so the compromises to Land Rover’s traditional rough-stuff capability are almost non-existent. You also get an electronic locking diff on the front axle and Land Rover’s clutch-based centre diff, which nominally splits power 50/50 front to rear but can send 100 percent of it to either pair of wheels. The driveline is materially unaltered, although new electronic controls for the eight-speed automatic transmission deliver faster shifts, while revised settings for the electronic locking rear differential make for enhanced traction and directional control. Although curiously SVO turned the wick for the F-Type SVR which produces 576bhp. The SVR is powered by the same ‘AJ133’ supercharged 5.0-litre V8 that goes in the V8 S/C model, albeit here in the more rarefied 542bhp tune with which it powers the Jaguar F-Type R Coupé. But it has also rather cleverly taken the opportunity to emphasise the engineering integrity of the standard Range Rover Sport by demonstrating – more or less – what it was always capable of. Instead, SVO’s approach was to be fairly pragmatic in deciding what to replace or simply retune or enhance from the Range Rover Sport. Porsche’s Cayenne Turbo is into its second generation, too. But, then, BMW was ahead of the game when it introduced the X5 a good half decade before Range Rover launched the Mk1 Sport in 2005. It’s a question BMW asked itself with the X5 M as long ago as 2010 and that it answered well enough to continue into the latest BMW X5 and BMW X6. Given that there are so many people with the income and inclination to buy one, the question is “why wouldn’t you make one?”.
This is still a vast SUV, but given the kind of demand that’s available globally for luxury and performance 4x4s, the question, then, is no longer “why would you make a car of this size, with this power?”. The car deploys 542bhp from its supercharged 5.0-litre V8 engine and adopts a raft of mechanical and dynamic changes to accompany the extra horsepower. The people at SVO have made the SVR nothing less than the most powerful Land Rover in the company’s history. There are now more people than ever before who have the means to afford cars like this Range Rover Sport SVR, the first Land Rover product of Jaguar Land Rover’s Special Vehicle Operations (SVO) division. In the past year, more than 500,000 people have become millionaires in the United States alone, and that rate is being outstripped by the Chinese.
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