► Month 14 and time to say goodbye
► Infotainment system worst in class
► But everything else makes up for it
As a nation we seem to have forgotten our suspicion of SUVs. I handed my Range Rover Sport back just as this car and its maker seemed to be reaching new heights of public adoration. In December Land Rover auctioned the two millionth Defender for an astonishing £400,000, and the following month Defender production finally ceased after 68 years. These two events reminded us of the contribution Land Rovers (and Range Rovers) have made to the nation. They were transport for our farmers, soldiers and explorers, they were the advance guard of Britain’s post-war export drive, and have been big overseas earners ever since.
At about the same time, and rather more trivially, James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke films went as viral as Spanish Flu. The new Late Late Show host drives (or is trailered) around Hollywood in a Range Rover Sport, singing with triple-A-list front-seat passengers such as Stevie Wonder and Adele.
The combined publicity of these events has been beyond value, and has even affected weary old hacks like me. I didn’t know whether to look upon my Range Rover Sport as Windsor Castle on wheels or the road-going equivalent of a Gulfstream jet. Either way, and even after nearly 15 months with the car (we only usually keep them for a year) I still walked up to it blinking slightly in disbelief that this was my daily driver.
Times were not always so good for Land Rover. Australians once said that if you wanted to get into the Outback you should take a Land Rover, but if you wanted to get back out again you should take a Land Cruiser. I had no such worries with my car. In more than 16,000 miles the only problem was a one-off windscreen wiper failure: not while it was raining, luckily, but when I operated the washers. Rebooting the car cured it, and testing over a few subsequent dry days couldn’t replicate it, so I didn’t take it to the dealer. Modern service intervals are such that the ‘service soon’ message only appeared a couple of days before the car was due to go back, so it never saw a workshop. A vicious stone chip required a replacement screen, but that was dealt with, at home, by the insurers and Autoglass. The replacement cost would have been more than £1100, the price inflated by the need for two fitters to attend to heave the vast thing into place, but we dodged that bullet too.
Since our car arrived in December 2014 the SDV6 engine has had a thorough upgrade, getting an extra 14bhp but more importantly gaining another 74lb ft of torque and 3mpg and dropping two tax bands. The changes only reinforce our view that this engine in HSE trim is the sweet-spot of the range. The diesel-electric hybrid is impressive but pricey and only available in Autobiography trim, so you’d need to be doing interstellar mileages for the tax and economy advantages to offset the extra outlay. The SVR has also arrived since our car was ordered, but with 550bhp and a claimed 21mpg (so 14mpg in reality) it’s not really a rival, although it is hilarious, and I see a surprising number of them on UK roads.
On economy, various readers have told me they regularly see better than 30mpg from a tank. They might have the benefit of the newer engine: I spent most of my time in the Sport driving like a policeman with my one- and two-year-olds aboard and saw up to 29mpg on steady UK motorway runs and 24mpg in mixed use, improving to 26mpg later, which was my average across the test. As an ‘owner’, that felt about acceptable for a car like this, although I followed the recent downward trend in fuel prices with more interest than most.
Would I have one again? In a hot second. If you’re considering it, you need to be aware that the infotainment system remains worst-in-class: be sure you can live with it, or wait for the excellent new NGI system to make its way over from Jaguar. Heed the ‘Sport’ part of the name too: this is not a car with the hangar-like boot of a Discovery, or even an XC90. Some practicality has been traded for image. But what an image, and what a piece of engineering.
Count the cost
Cost new: £75,607 (including £9357 of options)
Dealer sale price: £65,224
Private sale price: £61,754
Part-exchange price: £59,729
Cost per mile: 19p
Cost per mile including depreciation: £1.22
From the driving seat
+ Rivals the BMW X5 for on-road performance
+ 288bhp 3.0-litre V6 turbodiesel more than adequate given ‘lightweight’ aluminium construction
+ On the right tyres, still near-unstoppable off-road
Logbook: Range Rover Sport 3.0 SDV6 HSE Dynamic
Engine: 2993cc 24v twin turbodiesel V6, 288bhp @ 4000rpm, 442lb ft @ 2000rpm
Transmission: 8-speed auto, low range, all-wheel drive
Stats: 6.8sec 0-62mph, 138mph, 199g/km
Price: £66,250
As tested: £75,607
Miles this month: 720
Total miles: 16,054
Our mpg: 26.5
Official mpg: 37.7
Fuel costs overall: £2933
Extra costs: None