The SVR can be a blast. But is it at the expense of ride quality?
There are many reasons why the SVR shouldn’t handle, not least because it’s an SUV that sits high in the air, has permanent all-wheel drive and weighs north of two tonnes. Yet handle it does, as a recent CAR video shoot proved. The key is its supercharged V8 allied to the chassis’ adjustability, or how you can subtly play with the throttle and weight transfer to bend the handling to your will.
Front-end grip is strong if ultimately susceptible to understeer (you guessed!?), but snap shut the throttle just before the dreaded push takes hold and suddenly you’ve got a rear end that’ll smear and slide and tuck the nose in. It’s adjustable when you simply power onto the throttle too, especially in Dynamic mode, which can send up to 90 per cent of torque rearwards.
But when you’re not driving for YouTube clicks, does the SVR rides well? CAR reader and SVR owner Lee Ryan got me thinking about this, mailing to say he thought the ride was ‘abysmal’.
Our car (fitted with the once-optional 22s that are now standard) can be a bit lumpy around town. Typically it frees up at speed and ‘breathes’ with the road, to borrow chassis-engineer parlance, but it struggles with more heavily cambered roads, especially when the edge of the road is bumpy.
This induces – more chassis-engineer stuff
