Range Rover Sport: first ride impressions

What that four-pot will retain is, like this SDV6, an eight-speed ZF automatic transmission, whose selector is – unlike that of the latest Range Rover and most Jaguars – a stick rather than a rotary dial. 

The F-Type gets this too. It’s a visual reminder of the sporting intent of these models, according to Land Rover – oxymoron though you might think that is on a car that weighs comfortably more than two tonnes in base V6 form and, I would think, considerably more after you have added some choice options. 

But there are other sporting cues, too. The cabin architecture of the Sport is largely borrowed from its larger Range Rover brother (the ‘button count’ is down by 50 per cent on the existing model’s) but, compared with the last Sport, the steering wheel is 15mm smaller, and there’s an extra 2deg of rake to the windscreen and 15mm more tumblehome at the top of the glass. It’s a sleeker external shape.

The biggest differences, though, are allowed by the new platform. The driver sits 20mm lower than previously, in a similar posture to the Evoque’s. Making best use of the abandonment of under-chassis rails, the Sport sits 4mm lower overall than the old car but has 50mm more ground clearance. 

That the floor is higher and the roof lower means different seating in the rear, where occupants sit 42mm lower than before. “It’s less ‘stadium seating’ and more ‘chaise longue’,” says Carter. 

Yet because the wheelbase is up by 178mm over the outgoing Sport (and just 1mm different from the Range Rover’s), there is a lot more rear legroom.

But back to Walters Arena, and going quite quickly. Walters (Jason, not Arena) is down here about three or four times a month, he explains, although sometimes testers are left here for a few weeks at a time, honing and tuning. The Sport will get its fair share of acronyms and initialisms and mostly they’re electronically controlled, so there are huge options open to engineers when it comes to tweaking and finessing.

“What we try to do is find as many different surfaces as possible,” says Walters, at the wheel. “You can set up a dynamic ride on the road, but on surfaces such as this it’s unbearable,” he says, as we tear across yet more gravel, along access roads that are bordered by trees and mud. Little pathways spear off into mud and streams and up and down shockingly steep hills. 

>> Steve Cropley talks to design boss Gerry McGovern

>> Range Rover Sport: full technical details

So there’s great scope here for tuning. Even base Sports will get air suspension, and there are adaptive dampers, but the other goodies come higher up in the range. 

Active roll control is available. This pumps up the air suspension in both pitch and roll, to keep the body flatter under acceleration, deceleration and cornering, yet can slacken off to retain ride quality on poorer surfaces. 

There is a Dynamic Pack, which will bring with it the option of sharpening the steering ratio (already the quickest yet fitted to a Land Rover) and pedal response, and will include an E-differential, an electronically controlled, locking rear differential. 

And there’s TVVB, or torque vectoring via braking. “Conceptually, it’s similar to the system used in the McLaren 12C,” says Carter. Indeed, it was initially developed for the road – where it operates only beyond 0.6g – but its ability to brake an inside rear wheel has proven exceptionally handy for keeping the back end turning off road, too. “On ice, we’ve never before held a line like we can in this car,” says Carter.

In conditions like today’s, the Walters Arena gravel is quite grippy, but “weather conditions can change how it feels dramatically”, says Walters J. “When it’s wet, it can feel like a sheet of ice.” 

I’m still looking at the place like it’s basically a massive playground, but it’s clear to see why it’s so useful for tuning. There are so many surfaces here, including wading ditches and a rock crawl that Land Rover has built. There are other areas with loose rocks in the UK but, almost by definition, the rocks have moved by the time you come back to test again. Here, they’re fixed.

It’s all very impressive, but does anyone really notice? Apparently, so. Land Rover questions current owners and has found that every one of them will put their car’s Terrain Response system – the dial on the dashboard that controls power distribution, differential locking, stability program modes and all that malarkey – into its ‘Grass/Gravel/Snow’ setting at least once a year. Some 65 per cent of owners use that setting for at least 120 miles a year.

As with the latest Range Rover, there’s an automatic setting on the new Sport’s Terrain Response. Left in auto, there’s no visual indication of which mode the car adopts, but Walters can tell the Sport’s choice by the way it responds. Why no visual clue? “Sometimes, it puts you into modes you wouldn’t expect, like Sand when there’s 200-300mm of snow. That can lead customers to think there’s something wrong with it.”

As ever with these things, the car goes places you wouldn’t expect. Cars always go further off road than I think they ought to – keep moving when I think they should get stuck. I’m told that the Sport has 448mm of wheel travel as standard and 548mm in models with active roll control. Currently, it’s 430mm (a BMW X5 has 330mm). The approach angle is 31deg, breakover angle 27deg and departure angle 33deg – so the back should follow wherever the front will go. Our test car wears 275/45 R21 Goodyear Eagle 4x4 tyres, but options range from 19-inch to 22-inch rims.

But it’s the conversations and anecdotes, rather than the stats, that I like. At the end of a track, I spot a hill so steep, and with trees growing so far out of it, that you couldn’t even walk up it. There are tyre tracks leading part-way up it at the bottom. “You don’t go up that?” I ask. “No,” says Walters, “but we see how far we can get.” 

Partly it’s for a giggle, but there is a purpose to it. “The diagnostics needs to accept that it’s possible for all wheels to be spinning at the same 60mph yet the car isn’t moving,” says Walters. The risk is that, if the car thinks the two are incompatible, it deduces that it is going at 60mph and, say, drops the ride height accordingly or adjusts its ESP settings. The ESP and ABS can be much more aggressive, too, without increasing cabin noise, because the six-piston ABS sensor is located behind the headlight, as far from the bulkhead as is possible. It’s all but inaudible in its operation.

When wading, sensors on the air suspension detect that the body is rising, because its natural buoyancy lifts it. In a Land Rover, that tells the suspension to put itself on its highest setting to account for the water and keep the wheels on the deck. In some rivals, to try to maintain the selected ride height, the suspension collapses to its lowest setting, ultimately denying traction.

>> Steve Cropley talks to design boss Gerry McGovern

>> Range Rover Sport: full technical details

All well and good but, let’s face it, it has ‘Sport’ in the title and most of the time these cars will be used on the road. So they take me for a spin on the road in a Supercharged petrol variant. I’ll put my impressions aside (apart from the fact that it’s fast and sounds pretty good), because I’m not driving, but there are things worth knowing. This car sits 8mm lower to the ground than the Range Rover, “because we wanted to get the centre of roll and the centre of gravity closer together”, says Carter. 

The drop in height is why the wheelbase has grown by 1mm in the process, but it’s not as simple as just lowering the Range Rover. “All the things that connect the wheel to the steering wheel are different,” says Carter, “which is not good for the budget, but that’s how crucial the 8mm was to us.” Although there is a shared platform, if you count the number of chassis and body components, just 25 per cent are common between the two models.

“We’ve had to do more testing with this car than any other,” says Carter, but it has helped that the body is 39 per cent stiffer than the current model’s. “It’s allowed us to fine-tune the dampers to a level we haven’t managed before,” he says. “Before, we had to treat the chassis as part of the suspension.” 

The aim is to create a car that will feel notably keener and flatter than a Range Rover, accepting some ride quality compromise on the way. Carter admits that there are some exceptional rivals, the Porsche Cayenne, Volkswagen Touareg and BMW X5 among them.

With a refreshing dose of honesty, he admits that some will be “outright that touch better” in extremes on a track. “But we always sell on mud and snow tyres,” he says, “and the rivals won’t be better by a margin that we’re better in the other dimension.” I’m intrigued to find out.