Range Rover Sport review

The new Sport uses double-wishbone front suspension, with a new multi-link axle at the rear designed to make room for an electric drive motor for the forthcoming all-electric version. As standard, the car runs on a new height-adjustable, multi-chamber air suspension system that grants it up to 281mm of ground clearance. That’s a marginal gain on the 278mm of the previous-gen car, although getting it depends on avoiding the PHEV models, which offer slightly less. The car gets only open diffs and an eight-speed automatic gearbox without low range, unless you pay extra, though.

This time around, you can also add Dynamic Response Pro active anti-roll bars, active four-wheel steering and mechanical active torque-vectoring diffs, these three items being bundled as part of the £5330 Stormer Handling package on our test car.

In its styling, meanwhile, this new Sport becomes a disciple of design boss Gerry McGovern’s ‘reductive’ design philosophy, as first seen on the Range Rover Velar in 2017. Its primary features are smaller and neater than those of its predecessors, its surfaces cleaner for the most part. One voice among our road test jury suggested the new car’s look might have become a little too sleek and pretty and that a Range Rover ought to look more tough and functional. Even so, this is a handsome car.

Push harder on the road and some of that sense of dynamic sophistication can ebb away a little, the car’s electronic stability controls seeming peculiarly underdeveloped by JLR’s typically high standards (see ‘Track notes’). But generally, it is precisely that easy-going pleasure you would hope it might be.

Comfort and isolation

The Range Rover Sport registered just 60dBA of cabin noise at a 50mph cruise, on a pretty average dry autumn day on the Millbrook high-speed bowl. On the same stretch (albeit each in slightly different conditions), an Audi Q8 and BMW X5, both six-cylinder diesels, each registered 2dBA more, and a Mercedes S580e was only 1dBA quieter. Both SUV rivals were also noisier than the Range Rover Sport at idle by an even wider margin. 

Clearly, the work that has gone into boosting this car’s cruising manners is both deep-running and effective. Our test car’s optional 22in alloy wheels made its rolling refinement a shade less immaculate, and it occasionally clunked a little over sharper intrusions, but it always kept road surface hum to a minimum. If you want to configure your car for the best possible ride, we dare say you could simply pick a smaller rim and end up with something very special.

The front seats are broadly and easily adjustable, easy to slide into and very comfortable and they grant excellent forwards visibility. Rearward visibility can be boosted by Land Rover’s superb optional ClearView video rear-view mirror, which opens up your field of vision behind you, and also compensates for low light.

Track notes

Our test car dispatched the steepest inclines of the Millbrook Hill Route with performance to spare, containing body movements well. But there were a few instances, at the limit of grip, where the electronic stability control intervened particularly harshly to keep it on line, and once when that intervention actually forced the car closer to exiting the road than it would have been otherwise.

The DSC system works effectively up to a point. The car is secure under power but can slide around a little on a trailing throttle if you are carrying plenty of speed. Its movements are well telegraphed and would be instinctively controllable. But the DSC tends to work the front brakes particularly harshly, and quite early, to rein in yaw movements, and to resist what it may perceive as the threat of impending rollover – and doing that can be problematic if you’re making steering corrections yourself. There is a deactivation mode but it’s never fully off and it can intervene even when you are not expecting it to.