► Range Rover Sport long-term test diaries
► Piers Ward heads to the Alps on family hols
► Read month 1 here
On a recent family trip from Lincolnshire to Switzerland, everything started so well. The long-legged Range Rover Sport was brimmed and showing 600 miles to empty, bags were packed, the children’s iPad was charged, skis were waxed and ready to load.
And then a major snag – no ski hatch in the rear seat of the Range Rover Sport. Now I appreciate this is a bit ‘overheard in Waitrose’, but I’d wager a fair proportion of Range Rover Sport owners will also have a set of skis and would like to use their car to drive to the Alps, avoiding extortionate flight costs in school holidays. But in our Sport, the seats only fold 60:40, despite the middle rear having a separate frame.
Still, the rest of the car’s performance was exemplary. The big seats offer plenty of support where you need it, and I love the additional armrest both the driver and front passenger get, as in the full-fat Range Rover. It means you can relax into driving with just your fingertips, elbows supported by the door and central rest, music dialled into something soothing, kids plugged into iPad headsets. And breathe.
It’s a good job everyone was happy because fuel stops were few and far between – we averaged nearly 33mpg over both legs, with just the one fill needed each way. Turns out most of Europe was on manoeuvres when we went, so thank goodness it was just the two stops, as there were 15-minute queues for the petrol/diesel pumps. (The electric car charging bays seemed remarkably calm – maybe people are leaving those at home, using them for more local journeys.)
Other notable ways the Sport made the journey easier: you can easily flip the lights for driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road via a setting on the infotainment screen; the speedo can be set for km/h but is flexible enough to keep the odometer in miles; the off-road mode on the cameras is zoomed in to such an extent that it makes it incredibly easy to judge how close you can get to toll booths. Anything that makes it easier for your front passenger to reach over to the card slot has to be a good idea.
We put the car on Pirelli Scorpion winter tyres for the journey, in line with Swiss law, but this law was clearly written before climate change became so obvious, as we never got to test them out. It was 10C or more during the journey so we never even saw a smattering of snow on the tarmac.
It also feels like they move around a bit more at high speed compared to the Pirelli All Season tyres that come as standard. On the flip side, it did hammer it down with rain and I found them better at resisting aquaplaning than the Pirelli P Zero tyres fitted on our Mercedes-Benz EQE long-term test car.
Read month 1
Read month 2
Read month 3
Logbook: Range Rover Sport D300 SE
Price: £83,620 (£90,845 as tested)
Performance: 2997cc turbodiesel six-cylinder, 296bhp, 6.6sec 0-62mph, 135mph
Efficiency: 36.9mpg (official), 32.8mpg (tested), 200g/km CO2
Fuel cost: 27.0p per mile
Miles this month: 1984
Total miles: 19,576