Filed under: Performance, SUV, Land Rover, First Drives, Luxury, Off-Road
A Split Personality Makes For The Best Range Rover Yet
Tough as it no doubt was to engineer the new-for-2013 Land Rover Range Rover, I'm willing to bet that the company's engineers sweated a little harder over the launch of this 2014 Range Rover Sport. After all, the Sport is Land Rover's unlikely volume leader - it accounted for nearly 38 percent of the company's US sales in 2012. But beyond that, the Sport has to embody all of the unstoppable off-road attributes of anything wearing a Range Rover badge while, at the same time, being the brand's on-road dynamics flagship.
This thing has to hug curves and rip along the finest tree-lined roads the English countryside has to offer, and then be able to power upstream in a three-foot-deep river after only the touch of a button and the turn of a dial. It should be able to hit its electronically limited top speed of 155 miles per hour on tarmac with total poise and then negotiate a narrow rock crawl at a 40-degree angle with the same sort of confidence. Oh, and it needs to be comfortable and quiet, with room for many adults and their things, wrapped in sheetmetal that looks good when it's clean and even better with a fresh coat of mud. The Range Rover Sport has to do, well, everything.
So when it came time to put its new all-star to the test, Land Rover invited me across The Pond where I drove the 2014 Range Rover Sport over pavement and rocks and through mud and water. To say it handled everything off-road with aplomb would be an understatement. And to say that it's a dynamic joy on-road wouldn't give enough credit where credit is due.
But to say that the new Range Rover Sport is the best Land Rover - and maybe the best luxury SUV - that money can buy... well, now we're onto something.
Continue reading 2014 Land Rover Range Rover Sport [w/video]
2014 Land Rover Range Rover Sport [w/video] originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 03 Jul 2013 11:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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