Introduction

The Range Rover Sport fits between the full-size, top-line Range Rover and the entry-level, family-friendly LR3. The Sport looks sportier than either the purposeful LR3 or the stately Range Rover and those looks are not deceiving. It is, in fact, spirited, sporty, and relatively agile. And while it offers impressive off-road capability, it's designed as an on-road vehicle comfortable cruising at high speeds and negotiating crowded urban streets. As its name suggests, the Sport's emphasis is on handling. Its design supports this. The Range Rover Sport is built on a shorter wheelbase than the LR3 and Range Rover. Though all three share the same basic structure, the Sport stretches just 108 inches from the front to the rear wheels compared with 113 inches for the other two models. And while the LR3 and Range Rover offer seven-passenger seating, the Sport seats five people. The Sport falls between the LR3 and Range Rover from a pricing standpoint, also. The $58,000 Sport costs $20,000 less than the full-size Range Rover, and about as much as a fully loaded LR3. The Range Rover Sport was all-new for 2006. Land Rover has made no changes since then, except to add more standard equipment each year. New for 2008 are standard power folding exterior mirrors, an eight-way power-adjustable front passenger seat, power tilt-and-telescope steering, and some new interior trim and materials.

Walkaround

Casual observers may mistake the Range Rover Sport for the top-of-the-line Range Rover, but it's shorter and there are some styling cues that differentiate the two. The Sport is based on the Land Rover LR3, but the Sport is two inches shorter than the LR3 in overall length; and the wheelbase of the Sport is shorter by more than five inches. It's not as tall, by three inches. The width of the two differs by less than half an inch and the track (the distance between the left and right wheels) is identical to that of the LR3. Appearance-wise, the Sport looks similar to the top-of-the-line Range Rover, though it's built to a slightly smaller scale. Only the most discerning and trained eye will notice the hood is mostly flat, missing the full-size Range Rover's longitudinal humps running along the top outer edges back from the headlights. Or the presence of understated side skirts, front air dam and rear spoiler. Maybe the front quarter panels' side vents are more obvious, being closely patterned after the LR3's and in stark contrast to the Range Rover's vertical louvers. The most noticeable difference is the windscreen and backlight (rear windscreen) are faster, or more raked. Because, other than striking a slightly more rakish pose with its rounder, more tapered lines, the Sport contains all the major styling elements of the full-size Range Rover. The compound headlight clusters are indistinguishable. And the grille finishes are similar, with the HSE's a matte gray and the S/C's a bright metallic. The roof gets the marque's trademark floating look, achieved by blacking out the roof pillars. A similar character line runs the length of the body side, but with the door handles positioned beneath it to reinforce the Sport's lower profile. Taillights repeat the larger Range Rover's stacked look, only not quite as tall and with the elements staggered from the vertical. And just like the full-size Range Rovers, the Supercharged Sport has chrome-tipped dual exhausts in place of the HSE's bare, single exhaust.

Interior Features

While the Range Rover Sport's exterior unabashedly mimics the top-of-the-line Range Rover's looks, the interior stays truer to its LR3 underpinnings. The dash top, instrument cluster and steering wheel are direct transplants from the LR3, right down to the stacks of cruise control buttons and redundant audio controls next to the thin, vertical, metallic horn buttons along each side the airbag cover in the steering wheel hub. The tachometer has no redline, leaving drivers dependent on the Sport's computers to coordinate engine speed and gear selection with terrain idiosyncrasies (not that you'd normally be revving high off road). Although the center stack structure lays back at a more ergonomically friendly angle than the LR3's, the switches, knobs, buttons and display screens are the same as the LR3's, too, which while plentiful, are fairly easy to decipher. The four dash-top vents are shaped differently, but located in the same positions, belying the shared, behind-the-scenes framework. The navigation system's display is recessed in the dash at the top of the center stack and accessible to both front seat occupants. The seat contours are more defined than both the LR3's and the full-size Range Rover's standard accommodations, although the seat bottoms could be deeper and provide more thigh support. More pronounced bolsters in front add lateral support, and the rear seat's softer cushions render it less bench-like than it looks; we appreciated this over a several hour drive from Aspen, Colorado, to the smooth red rock around Moab, Utah. Infinitely adjustable, inboard arm rests in front ease long, droning, interstate drives. The head restraints could be better. The positioning of the front-seat head restraints favors the back-seat movie watchers. To ensure the best viewing experience, the head restraints, which double as housings for the video screens, are fixed in a vertical plane; in other words, they're adjustable only up or down and cannot be angled forward or backward. We found the head rest a bit intrusive. More vehicles are coming this way in an effort to reduce the chance of neck injuries in a rear-end collision. Reclining the front seat a bit lessened the discomfort. A panel of auxiliary jacks for the entertainment system is set into the rear of the front center console, along with the levers for the optional rear seat heaters. In most interior measures, the Sport fits between the more utilitarian LR3 and the better-appointed but tighter-fitting Range Rover. The Sport's front seat offers less leg and headroom than the LR3, but more legroom than the Range Rover and about the same headroom. The Sport's rear seat headroom is also less than in the LR3, but about the same as in the top model; and legroom is the same as in the LR3 but more than in the Range Rover. In cargo space, the Sport fits where it logically should, offering almost 20 fewer cubic feet than the much more upright LR3 but less than four fewer than the Range Rover. Save for cup holders, of which there are but two, protected by a sliding cover in the front center console, incidental storage is decent. The nifty little cool box packaged with the Luxury Interior option fits in the cubby in the center console aft of those cup holders and chills small beverage bottles and snacks. The front doors have two map pockets, the rear doors, one. Pouches for magazine and headsets are stitched into the backside of the front seat backs. The bi-level glove box's upper element doubles as a CD rack. Atop this, a divided tray for odds and ends fills the space between the air conditioning registers.