The Range Rover SV Sport Hauls Ass Handsomely: First Drive Review

If it seems like six-figure SUVs have multiplied like springtime rabbits, you’d be right. Aston Martin and Bentley offer upper-crust ‘utes now, along with Rolls Royce and Lamborghini. Hell, even Ferrari’s got one. But rather than crowd out the longtime stalwarts at Land Rover, this increased competition had the opposite effect.

People want high-end Range Rovers more than ever.

The increased demand for high-dollar Ranges has spurred a couple big moves, the first of which is to streamline the line’s “SV” badging, once applied to many trims across the model ranges, such as “SV Autobiography.” It’s a symbolic gesture that speaks to the streamlining of production practices within Land Rover’s Special Vehicle Operations department. 

The “SV” badge now denotes the absolute top-of-the-line Range Rover products. That’s it. 

“Basically all of our Range Rover products within Special Vehicle Operations (SVO) will have the SV nomenclature. ‘SV’ is clean, it’s simple, it speaks to the reductive nature of the brand and the design philosophy,” SVO director Jamal Hameedi said. “Less is more; In pretty much everything we do, that’s our visual mantra.”

Photo by: Land Rover

SVO’s studio, which was originally meant to accommodate the production of 60 cars per week, is now doing 200 cars within the same period, Hameedi explained. Hence the need to streamline everything from simple nomenclature to SVO’s wildly complex build processes.

So Land Rover SVO invited Motor1 out to the delightful English Cotswalds, where we might blitz the region’s delightful countryside two-lanes in the new Range Rover Sport with an “SV” badge on the “boot.”  

This was partly an exercise in driving SVO’s newest offering, but also a showcase for the department’s new direction. Experts from SVO led the gathered, unwashed media masses through the “bespoke” build process SVO’s customers experience, and showed off materials developments that embellish every corner of these bespoke vehicles. 

Photo by: Land Rover

Photo by: Land Rover

Though SV represents the pinnacle of the Range Rover lineup, it’s actually more like two pinnacles. 

For the traditional Range Rover SUV, the SV badge means a bit of grunt under the hood, but mostly it denotes a focus on absolute luxury. With the Range Rover Sport SV, which we drove in the Cotswolds, those two letters mean something entirely different. 

They mean haulin’ ass. 

Hameedi—who you may remember as the former Ford man responsible for the 2013 Raptor and Shelby GT500—and his team applied their considerable experience to that end. We’ve had fast Range Rover Sports before, but this one raises the stakes. 

Our Sport SV tester came equipped with optional (and very expensive) 23-inch carbon-fiber wheels and eight-piston Brembo calipers paired to suitably gigantic carbon ceramic rotors. If these seem extraneous for an SUV, Hameedi notes an insatiable appetite among SVO’s customers. They want the absolute best, regardless of whether or not they’ll use that tip-of-the-spear capability. 

“And if that ‘best’ is something that no one else has in the industry, that’s even more special,” Hameedi said of the 23-inch carbon wheels. 

Photo by: Land Rover

These optional high-performance extras pair to a well-equipped “base” SUV—priced a smidge above $180,000—that’s already eminently capable. The Sport SV’s hood harbors a 626-horsepower 4.4-liter twin-turbo V-8 that pumps out 553 pound-feet of torque. through an eight-speed automatic. Land Rover reports a 3.6-second 0-60 sprint.

Those popular optional carbon wheels reportedly save 20 pounds of curb weight per corner, and come wrapped in 285-section rubber up front with 305s out back. It’s one helluva slab of rubber perched on each corner, upping the truck’s handling credentials beyond just straight-line thrust.

We were able to aim those slabs at the Prescott Hill Climb, which one local said was the second-oldest in the UK. The Hill Climb is an ancient and sacred motoring tradition in the UK, one unfamiliar to us Americans, but deeply cool nonetheless.

Many mid-century British heroes first plied their trade on a hill climb; It’s a cheap, friendly, and accessible route into amateur motorsport for Britons, wherein you simply drive a car up a hill on a road as fast as your courage will carry you. 

Photo by: Land Rover

Photo by: Land Rover

Photo by: Land Rover

Hill Climbs are not necessarily important to the broader story of Land Rover, but to find yourself in the charming British countryside in a British car aimed up one of the oldest hill climbs in Britain isn’t for nothing. 

Especially since these narrow sinuous courses don’t favor vehicles like this, namely SUVs approaching three Imperial tons with huge body roll and leather massaging sofas for seats.

Yet the Sport SV feels mostly at home here. 

Off the start line, it’s a missile. I’ll bet it’d put most modern hill-climb participants out to pasture here with its combination of all-wheel-drive grip and the suspension squatting to aid those massive rear tires. 

Even on a cold damp track, the SV rockets away from a stop.

The first big left-hander arrives shortly thereafter, a medium-long bend that opens into another galloping straight. The SV handles it with ease, shouldering into the corner with one swift and controlled heave from the cabin. The Sport SV’s magnetic dampers and air suspension work wonders here, controlling mid-corner dips in the pavement, while also steadying the first rebound motion with aplomb.

Photo by: Land Rover

The second-longest straight comes a corner later, and produces the course’s biggest braking moment, when romping toward a left-hand uphill hairpin where failure is not an option unless you want to suck down a wall alongside that morning’s Full-English.

The SV’s sports-car quick acceleration and eager tip-in betray its massive curb weight most of the time, so when you mush the brake pedal here, there’s a short moment of panic when you wonder, “Should I have braked a second sooner?”

But if you don’t rush the steering input, and square off the corner a bit, the big Rover’s front end handles that huge compression admirably, with no hint of nervousness from the unloaded rear tires. 

That solidity under braking allows you to wrestle the Rover’s nose toward the apex a moment or two after you’ve let its curb weight rock forward to take a real, meaningful set. If you account for all that shifting weight, there’s a good amount of available grip to exploit. 

The rubber slabs work absolute miracles here.

Photo by: Land Rover

Photo by: Land Rover

We had only a few cracks at the course, and at far less than full attack, but it was a good demonstration of the Range Rover Sport SV’s behavior around its absolute limits. Most drivers of these rigs won’t go searching for this brand of thrills, but as ever, it’s always better to have more capability than you’ll ever need.

While this SV proves competent-enough up a hill climb, it’s better than good on a narrow rolling backroad. The adaptive suspension really shines here, snaking beautifully over rural English two-lanes, especially when set to the vehicle’s “Sport” mode, rather than its most-comfortable setting.

Sport tightens up suspension and steering response without ever becoming burdensome to your backside. The whole truck benefits from that extra sharpness, in any situation, without any appreciable penalty in ride comfort or quality. 

Photo by: Land Rover

The SV’s drivetrain responds in kind, selecting earlier shift points and offering a more eager engine calibration. That makes this big SUV feel lighter on its feet and more eager to turn, whether you’re launching out of a hairpin exit or just rolling a quick right-hander through the packed city center.

If I owned one of these things, I’d never ever take it out of Sport mode. 

My only complaint, really, is how road noise washes through the cabin on backroads with rough pavement. The interior is free of clunks and judders from big suspension moments and road impacts, but there’s more road and tire noise than you’d like to have. 

Some of it, you’d suspect, is down to performance tradeoffs. In building an SUV that can sprint to sixty as fast as a Porsche 911, you’ll inevitably forego the thickest and sturdiest materials, like sound deadening and acoustic glass and a tire compound that isolates noise better than the rest. To save weight and meet those performance goals, you can’t have ultimate comfort.

Photo by: Land Rover

The rest of this road noise issue is down to shape, I’d wager: this SUV’s cabin is essentially a giant speaker box, so there are always going to be some challenges when taming engine drone and road frequencies. (4Runner and Tahoe owners will nod along in agreement).

If you’re bothered enough by some drone from grainy road surfaces, just drop the Sport thing altogether; There’s a Range Rover SV with your name on the title. 

Overall, this Range Rover Sport SV offers a surpassingly comfortable and civilized place to spend time. Interior quality feels second-to-none, without any of the garish, over-designed faff you see from other automakers.

Photo by: Land Rover

For once, I’m happy there’s a big central screen in front of me. It suits the car’s—and the brand’s—adherence to visual minimalism. The UI responds in a snappy and simple way. It’s laid out logically and without an excess of sub-menus to select your most-used features. 

I’ve thought for years that a big slab-of-a-screen perched in the center console was a sin, but it turns out it’s just an issue of execution. 

The system’s navigation function is actually good enough to compete with Google Maps and looks better doing it. (When you test hundreds of cars, you find out how rare that actually is). During the hours we spent on the road, I came to rely on the navigation system’s voice commands, which don’t interrupt music more often than they have to (Google Maps, for example, will interrupt you seven times per roundabout). Again, another breakthrough. 

Music of all types sounds great in the cabin, I’ll add. There’s a pair of speakers in each front bucket seat that boom during certain low frequencies, sending tingles and vibrations up your spine. It’s a novel thing to experience in a production car, but if you’ve ever been 16 and plugged a massive sub into your VW Jetta, you’ll be deeply familiar with the relationship between your spine and bass. 

Photo by: Land Rover

Photo by: Land Rover

The system worked particularly well with electronic music, where there’s a punchy constant thrumming underpinning every second, but fell short of brilliance with nearly every other genre. I’d turn the feature off unless I had a long drive down the autobahn and the right mix of dnb-tinged EDM lined up.

To cap the drive, we took a meander across some muddy English countryside and down some very slick dirt two-tracks. All the Land Rover credentials were accounted for in this sporty Range Rover. Hill-descent control worked flawlessly; I’m astonished at the tire technology on this truck; How these slabs can provide enough grip to beat back the Sport SV’s curb weight on a short race track but also hold firm down ultra-slick hillsides, despite the tires’ cross-sections being so damned wide. 

It’s incredible stuff, really. We’re in the golden era for tires, and the era keeps getting better.

Photo by: Land Rover

All told, the $180,000 entry price buys you a very well-equipped vehicle. I’d feel no need to spring for the carbon wheels and gigantic brakes, but it sounds like many buyers won’t be dissuaded.

From there, Land Rover opens up its portfolio of bespoke finishing options. Paint colors, accent colors, interior coverings and fittings and finishings. It’s a dizzying array, but not with so many options you’ll suffer choice paralysis. 

Land Rover’s staff said it’s just the right amount of choice for clients who want something bespoke, but still quiet and understated in its own way.

“Our offering is very sophisticated, it’s very reductive, it’s not blingy,” Hameedi said. “There’s a lot of other companies that you can go to and get a very extroverted, shouty kind of product that is not really our brand. And that seems to have really resonated in that with Range Rovers and a Range Rover SV, we can absolutely achieve price points of maybe a Bentley or a Rolls Royce.”

But with an SUV as good-looking and nice to drive as the Sport SV, you certainly don’t have to spring for the competition to look and feel special.