Range Rover Sport SV review

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Gaydon sends its talismanic Range Rover Sport in exotic super-SUV territory

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When Rover engineers Gordon Bashford and Spen King finally birthed the original Range Rover in 1970, they can’t have had any idea how important a car it was. Land Rover’s various owners would spend the next 50 years exploring the potential of the Range Rover badge, and JLR continues to do so today. Which brings us to the subject of this review, the new Range Rover Sport SV.

A slightly different take on the idea of a range-topping, ultra-desirable Range Rover Sport, it comes to us almost a decade to the day since the debut of its immediate predecessor at Pebble Beach in 2014: the Range Rover Sport SVR.

Packed full of visual and vocal attitude, that hot Range Rover – the ‘494 RS’, as Land Rover engineers knew it – was emblematic of JLR’s Special Vehicle Operations division at its most performance-fevered peak. It came along just a few years before Jaguar’s wild Project 7 roadster and Project 8 super-saloon specials and represented JLR reaching into Porsche and Mercedes-AMG territory.

But the new Range Rover Sport SV seems to strike out in a different direction again. Rather than putting outright on-road performance and handling at the core of its mission, this special derivative is designed to be a better and more desirable kind of Range Rover in a much broader sense.

It has been engineered like no other high-performance product in the Range Rover brand’s history but is intended to stand out just as clearly for its refinement, luxuriousness and Range Rover-typical reductive design appeal.

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So can a product as broadly based as that, which is meant to be ‘ultimate’ in so many ways, really cut through in the conspicuously loud niche of the sport-SUV?

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DESIGN & STYLING

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range rover sv review side panning

This car becomes the Range Rover Sport’s new top-rung performance derivative. That isn’t quite how the SV badge is used on a full-size Range Rover, however (where it identifies an ultra-luxury derivative with no particular performance brief). It might also come as a surprise to owners of the last-gen Range Rover Sport SVR, to whom an SV could seem – notionally, at least – like a backwards step.

To look at, the SV is certainly more reserved than its predecessor. It doesn’t have the old car’s yawning front intakes, dramatically flared wheel arches or retina-burning paint palette, although its quad exhaust pipes and aerodynamic features soon catch your attention.

Two shark fin roof aerials rather than one? When so much else about the Range Rover Sport is ‘reductive’ almost to a fault, they do look odd, although in previous Range Rover models one has been responsible for normal DAB radio reception, the other the car's mobile data connection
Illya Verpraet
Road Tester

Plainly, JLR’s design team wanted this car to speak in more hushed tones than the SVR ever did, the better to preserve the design themes of the regular Range Rover Sport. Given how little moderation is shown in the exterior design of this car’s competitors (BMW XM, Lamborghini Urus, Mercedes-AMG G63), that’s a different, if slightly risky, approach.

The visual makeover undoubtedly – and no doubt deliberately – undersells the SV’s mechanical overhaul. It becomes the only member of the UK-market Range Rover Sport line available with a V8 engine – specifically the BMW 4.4-litre twin-turbocharged mild-hybrid S63 unit that powered the last-generation M5 – which gives it 626bhp and 553lb ft.

Those figures are healthy improvements on what the old supercharged Range Rover Sport SVR could muster, although they are unlikely to get too much attention when so many fast SUVs now offer more than 700bhp.

Those reserves are channelled through an eight-speed automatic gearbox and then to the road via a centre differential and an electronically controlled torque-vectoring locking rear differential.

But the car’s axles, suspension and steering have had the most work. A new rear subframe features, along with new suspension links that deliver widened tracks and more aggressive wheel geometries. Multi-chamber air springs get special tuning and deliver a ride height up to 25mm lower than that of any other Range Rover Sport.

Alongside them, the standard car’s adaptive dampers and active anti-roll bars have been replaced by what Gaydon calls a 6D Dynamic interlinked system of active damping hydraulics, which can better control both pitch and roll and saves weight. Four-wheel steering is carried over from the regular Sport, with a new, quickened steering rack up front.

Steel brakes, 23in forged wheels and all-season tyres are standard – and even on the latter (which help to bolster the SV’s any-condition usability and off-road capability, of course), JLR claims this car can generate nearly a quarter more lateral cornering load than the SVR.

Optionally available – and, sadly, not fitted to our test car – are the first carbonfibre wheels and carbon-ceramic brakes ever to be offered on a Range Rover and which save a whopping 76kg of unsprung mass. As it was, our test car had a homologated weight of 2485kg (some 150kg greater than the SVR) and weighed 2546kg in running order with two-thirds of a tank of fuel.

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INTERIOR

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range rover sv review dash

After the starkly contrasting leathers and aggressively bolstered sports seats of the Range Rover Sport SVR, the interior of the SV looks and feels rich, lavish and surprisingly varied in its tone.

There is a sporty look to the front chairs, which have carbonfibre shells for that extra performance flavour. But the wider cabin seems much less preoccupied with conventional performance tropes than you might expect. Though the SV badges are clear and present, it’s still a luxury interior first and foremost, so you have to look quite hard for any traces of the usual carbonfibre or Alcantara.

Some interior material trim choices are yours to make, but there’s no avoiding quite a lot of shiny black plastic on the transmission console, which may be a turn-off for some
Matt Saunders
Road test editor

JLR’s minimalist philosophy on physical switchgear is readily apparent. The centre console looks quite bare with only a gearshifter and starter button on it; and it may take you a while to find the hazard warning button, hidden away as it is between the central air vents.

But this isn’t a strait-laced, anodyne interior. The car has what JLR calls Body and Soul seats (shortened to Bass, for reasons that will become apparent), which have several speakers and resonators integrated within them and will vibrate the lower frequencies of your favourite music directly into your back if you so choose (see ‘Multimedia system’, below). But press the ‘SV’ button at the bottom of the steering wheel rim and the mood changes: the digital instruments turn a menacing shade of red and you feel the car’s body drop on its suspension.

For outright cabin space front and rear, the SV matches or beats what you will find in some rivals, with plenty of space for adults in row two. It has a large and square load area under a fairly high roofline, and it might therefore be pressed into more useful utility car service than many SUV-coupé alternatives.

Multimedia system

Without any surrounding physical shortcut buttons at all, the 13.1in Pivi Pro touchscreen infotainment system of the Range Rover Sport SV has a lot of ground to cover on functionality. It manages to do it quite well. Useful navigation bars and permanently displayed HVAC slider controls make for decent usability – although physical heater controls would still be less fiddly and distracting.

The standard-fit 29-speaker, 1430W Meridian Signature audio system sounds very impressive, and that’s before you activate the Body and Soul (Bass) active seats, each of which comes equipped with audio enhancement tech, two built-in speakers and four transducers to boost vibrations.

They have resonance programs to either calm you down or quicken your pulse – or they can simply tap along to the beat of the music you are listening to. The seats feel like a bit of a novelty feature, though. Most testers turned them back off before long, and none said they made much difference to their ‘state of wellness’.

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

range rover sv review engine

The SVR had a V8 exhaust note that, at its wildest, could clear the outside lane of a motorway at a range of about 400 yards, but in line with the car’s wider transformation, the SV is at least marginally more demure.

In place of that fearsome supercharged bellow, you get a slightly higher-register V8 warble here – one less angry and spiky in character and more homogeneous and melodious, albeit (no doubt due to tougher emissions standards) more synthesised-sounding.

There’s no handbrake switch here: the electronic handbrake actuates automatically when you put the gearbox into park. Which, for those who like to leave their cars in ‘D’ and engage the handbrake at traffic lights, may seem a strange choice
Matt Saunders
Road test editor

In terms of the style and breadth of its delivery, this twin-turbocharged V8 offers plenty. It revs quite freely, all the way beyond 7000rpm when you need it to, and it empowers the SV to take off with real brutality from standing and through the lower gear ratios.

Launch control starts certainly aren’t smooth, luxurious experiences. While the body resists squatting to extremes, each successive automatic gearchange really tears through the driveline and makes your head rock back. That’s quite rare in a performance car with a torque-converter gearbox, but here the apparent tension and friction in a driveline with its fair share of locking differentials is clear to perceive.

There is, of course, abundant traction and forward momentum, too. This car is highly unlikely to leave you wanting more, but it recorded a 0-60mph time of 3.9sec in a class where we’ve seen Porsches and Lamborghinis dip well under 3.5sec in recent years – and where even quicker EVs now exist.

The Range Rover Sport SVR, for the record, managed it in 4.4sec. It’s a similar story in terms of roll-on acceleration. While the Urus we tested in 2019 got from 30-70mph in 2.8sec, the SV took 3.2sec.

Adaptability is a stronger calling card for this car’s powertrain than outright pace, however. In SV mode, the engine holds onto gears for longer and leaves drive engaged on the overrun as you close in on corners for a tangible sporting sense of purpose.

In its gentler moments, it can be a picture of remarkable silver-tongued smoothness and docility. And in JLR’s off-roading modes, the powertrain’s controls and responses are dulled a little, just as you would want them to be for the sake of the close management of momentum.

RIDE & HANDLING

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range rover sv review rear cornering

You can easily lose count of the number of cars this Range Rover is trying be and how many roles from which it wants to remain just a finger flick away. It might start as the ostentatious luxury town car, becoming the easy-striding fast GT next and then the demonic back-road bruiser or demonstrative motorway slugger. Even then, other hats are ready to slip on at will.

Such adaptability is in the nature of the modern performance SUV, you might say. But few other brands tend to develop the more rugged and useful personas of these kinds of cars as far as Land Rover does or lets them bleed into the core of the car’s dynamic identity in quite the same way.

Suffice to say, there’s always a sense of burliness, inertia and heft about the SV’s on-road ride and handling. It’s never the kind of fast SUV that suddenly seems to shake off half a tonne, to find a way to corner like a super-saloon, as a Porsche Cayenne or Aston Martin DBX can. 

SV mode certainly makes it a little bit meaner, firmer and meatier of feel. The steering goes from slick, easy and medium-weighted to heavy, testy and interactive. The ride suddenly feels in constant touch with the road, having been keener to keep you removed from it before. The body control turns a little reactive to bigger inputs and seldom stays perfectly level and flat, but the damping system works quickly to address the movements of a body that, like it or not, is wont to move.

There isn’t quite the sort of outright mechanical grip here, or the incisive chassis balance or handling agility, to entice you to attack tighter corners as if you were in a hot hatchback or sports car – although, for a car of its size, the SV is no mean dynamic achievement. It feels well damped, secure at speed and precise enough to carry plenty of pace from point to point.

But there’s simply too much mass, too much body movement and inertia to push through and slightly too little active torque vectoring or willingness to pivot under power for the car to earn a place alongside the class’s most eager-handling SUVs. There is amusement to be had – just not the most distinguishing kind.

Comfort & Isolation

The SV does succeed in broadening the dynamic range of the regular Range Rover Sport. That in itself deserves credit, when so many rivals can still be tuned towards caricaturish extremes, but it doesn’t do that without compromise.

In its more comfortable driving modes the SV has most of the cushioning and refinement of the standard car on smooth Tarmac, feeling supple and retaining a ready sense of compliance.

Secondary ride comfort does take a hit from those 23in forged rims, and the SV tends to clunk and fuss over sharper edges quite markedly. There’s a rigidness about the car’s damping that can make the ride a little wooden-feeling in firmer driving modes, too. It doesn’t seem to leave a loaded wheel with the dexterity to soak up even a small impact, to the point of occasionally causing gentle steering kickback.

The front seats are comfortable and adjustable, and visibility to all aspects is good. A physical shortcut button on the steering wheel to deactivate the car’s most irksome driver assistance tech also contributes to its all-round easy agreeableness. In most respects, it need only be as highly strung and demanding as your mood dictates.

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MPG & RUNNING COSTS

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range rover sv review

The pricing of the SV seems something of a water tester. Anecdotal stories from dealers about Range Rover buyers who were ready to spend twice as much on a car than they actually were able to have been commonplace for years.

Well, this one is certainly testing their veracity. When the SVR bowed out in 2022, at its priciest it was £113,000 before options. This SV Edition One is a £171,000 car and could be more expensive still with the right boxes ticked. Which leaves absolutely no room for excuses.

Initially, says JLR, the SV was offered in small numbers to selected customers in Edition One trim. It is now available in one of five ‘curated’ factory combinations of colour and trim, each named after a different celestial body or mythical being (Gaea, Theia, Io, Vega and Sol).

Gaydon hasn’t said how many of these Celestial Collection cars will be available, but it’s clearly managing market supply very closely and proceeding into shark-infested waters rather carefully. Don’t be surprised if slightly more reasonable asking prices present themselves in due course. 

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VERDICT

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range rover sv review static

Having considered everything the new Range Rover Sport SV seeks to be, and remembering everything its predecessor was, it’s difficult to decide if this new fast SUV sophisticate is actually more likeable for being that bit more grown-up.

The SVR was, after all, undeniably a laugh. But the SV sacrifices much of that car’s fun factor, and in slipping on smarter clothes and with its more mature and varied dynamic brief, it takes a less direct but more multifaceted route to justifying what is a very exotic price point.

Is it compelling enough to manage it? We’re not convinced, although it has its moments. SV mode does let the car express itself; allows the chassis to take a bit of angle under power on a corner wide enough to permit it; and provides some sporting poise to lift the experience.

But in other respects this car may actually be a bit too versatile and luxurious to be considered extraordinary enough to justify a near-£200k sticker price.

Time will tell if super-SUV buyers can be persuaded by maturity rather than out-and-out madness – although it would be encouraging to discover they could.

Matt Saunders

Matt Saunders Autocar
Title: Road test editor

As Autocar’s chief car tester and reviewer, it’s Matt’s job to ensure the quality, objectivity, relevance and rigour of the entirety of Autocar’s reviews output, as well contributing a great many detailed road tests, group tests and drive reviews himself.

Matt has been an Autocar staffer since the autumn of 2003, and has been lucky enough to work alongside some of the magazine’s best-known writers and contributors over that time. He served as staff writer, features editor, assistant editor and digital editor, before joining the road test desk in 2011.

Since then he’s driven, measured, lap-timed, figured, and reported on cars as varied as the Bugatti Veyron, Rolls-Royce Phantom, Tesla Roadster, Ariel Hipercar, Tata Nano, McLaren Senna, Renault Twizy and Toyota Mirai. Among his wider personal highlights of the job have been covering Sebastien Loeb’s record-breaking run at Pikes Peak in 2013; doing 190mph on derestricted German autobahn in a Brabus Rocket; and driving McLaren’s legendary ‘XP5’ F1 prototype. His own car is a trusty Mazda CX-5.