RANGE ROVER SPORT P530 I BMW iX M60 I PORSCHE CAYENNE GTS
Terrible weather makes for the perfect fast SUV playground. Is the new Range Rover Sport still the best of the breed?
Giant test
THE DEFINITIVE VERDICT
IN SOPHISTICATED GIOLA GREEN THE RANGE ROVER SPORT IS MAGNIFICENT IN ITS UNFUSSY, HEWN- FROM-SOLID ELEGANCE
Well, that was exciting. At one point your Range Sport was moving in every direction except forwards.’
CAR’s James Taylor is both a very laid-back individ-ual and a talented driver. As such, very little ruffles his feathers. And after watching my progress from the se-rene bridge of the bizarrely oxymoronic BMW iX M60 – acar that’s at once brutally rapid and ridiculously relaxing – his heart rate is exactly as it should: deep and crisp and even. After the Range Rover Sport’s slimy-road boogying, mine’s a little more ragged.
There is, we’re told, no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes. Or the wrong car. And a new Range Rover Sport is surely the right car. Unfazed by the world and the weather beyond their glass, fast SUVs are perhaps the definitive all-weather perfor-mance cars. A good one lets you romp across even flooded, ice-ravaged landscapes in remarkable luxury, flippantly putting enormous power to the road in a manner unthinkable in a lesser vehicle.
The rain’s horizontal as I clamber into our Range Rover Sport and wake the BMW-derived 4.4-litre V8. There are one or two design chiefs integral to their brand but few for whom you can make the argument their work has been transformative. In sophisticated Giola Green with Light Cloud and Ebony leather, the new Sport is the embodiment of Gerry McGovern’s luxurification (sic) of Land Rover. It is magnificent in its unfussy, hewn-from-solid elegance, and its aes-thetic merit is precisely why McGovern’s been packed off back down into his ideas quarry, hammer and pick in hand, and told not to emerge until he’s struck gold again, this time for sister brand Jaguar.
The Sport’s interior is entirely conventional in its layout but beautifully done (only the chrome plastic bezels to the climate controls feel cheap), particularly the beautiful and responsive main touchscreen (though it does go on strike for half an hour, refusing to show anything but the Land Rover logo). As befits the Sport, you’re slotted more snugly into the cockpit than is the case with the Range Rover, the shallower screen and side glass stripping the Sport of that car’s spacious opulence and panoramic views. The Sport’s more aggressive exterior style demands this shift but, given it limits your sight lines, it has the effect of mak-ing a big car feel, well, big.
Still, as I bark out a series of voice commands the Sport scores a hitherto-unheard-of 100 per cent ac
