First published in Vicarious magazine- Spring 2024
When engineering a modern high-performance vehicle, it’s important to keep a certain role model in mind—the go-kart. By go-kart, I don’t mean the dog-slow, beat-up rental karts at your local amusement park. No, I mean the racing karts with the power-to-weight ratio of the average Formula One car.
These things have acres of grip, near-telepathic handling and, of course, blistering straightline acceleration. The further away a high-performance vehicle is from a racing kart, the more you risk alienating the hardcore track enthusiasts out there.
The engineering team at Jaguar Land Rover understands this all too well. Like their colleagues working at other luxury manufacturers, they have to contend with producing new vehicles that are stronger, safer, quieter, more spacious, more efficient and more capable than the immediate predecessors.
Case in point: the all-new 2024 Range Rover Sport SV Edition One, the third ultra high-performance version of the brand’s sportiest SUV. The first, the Range Rover Sport Supercharged, appeared in 2005. The second, the Range Rover Sport SVR, arrived in 2014.
As entertaining as those vehicles were, the new model is something else altogether.
Let’s start with the glaring negative, the weight of the Range Rover Sport SV: it’s 2,560 kg (5,645 lbs.), roughly the same as a Cadillac Escalade, Ford Expedition or Toyota Land Cruiser. That kind of heft is all well and good if the objective is to create a luxury full-size SUV with every imaginable amenity, and space for seven passengers and all their luggage.
Here’s the thing, though: The engineering brief for the SV was even more ambitious. Every imaginable amenity. Space for five passengers and some for all their luggage. Off-road capability that exceeds almost everything else on the planet, apart from vehicles named Defender and Discovery. And the ability to tear around a racetrack with comparable performance to a $150,000 sports car.
“No other vehicle in the world can do this,” says Jamal Hameedi, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) Special Vehicle Operations Director, during the global media presentation. “No other vehicle has this breadth of capability.” On the surface, this might sound like an outrageous claim. But you need to study the CV of the man behind the claim.
Prior to joining JLR, Hameedi worked with Ford Performance, leading the teams responsible for the Ford GT, Ford Focus RS, Ford Mustang Shelby GT350 and Ford F-150 Raptor, among many others. When work began on the Range Rover Sport SV some five years ago, he was adamant that the press launch should take place on a racetrack. So, here we are at the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve, a high-speed stretch of tarmac in southern Portugal that hosted a Formula One race in 2020 and ’21.
It’s the exact wrong place to bring a 2,560-kg SUV.
The start/finish straight is almost a full kilometre in length. It’s punctuated by a steep decline just before the braking point for the first corner. There’s plenty of run-off area if you happen to miss that braking point. But it still takes a lot of confidence to wait until the bottom of that decline before throwing out the proverbial anchor.
The intimidating track also has a pair of blind turns, another set of hairpins, two gut-wrenching downhill sections and a high-speed off-camber final corner that, again, represents a very real test of courage.
To tackle this unique challenge, JLR engineers have given the Range Sport SV plenty of ammunition. A twin-turbocharged 4.4L mild hybrid V-8 that generates 626 horsepower and 553 pound-feet of torque. Optional carbon ceramic brakes with exclusive eight-piston calipers, developed together with Brembo. And a trick hydraulic air suspension system engineered to keep all that mass on an even keel when accelerating, braking or cornering.
The SV Edition One also comes equipped with all-wheel steering, a brake-activated torque vectoring system, an active locking rear differential, rear tires that are 20 mm wider than the front tires and, of course, an all-wheel drive system. All of these technologies work together to create more capability when climbing mountains and/or clipping apexes.
Despite all the press releases and all the specifications, it’s still a mind-bending experience to bury the throttle when the track opens up and hammer the brake pedal at the 150-metre board before that first corner. It takes time to convince yourself that the big Range Rover will respond unfailingly, despite the credentials of the engineers involved and the five years it’s taken to develop the vehicle.
After just four laps behind the wheel, it’s clear that there’s so much potential performance left on the table. It’s not possible to approach the limits in so little time in the SV, something that’s really brought home later, when riding shotgun with chief engineer Matt Backer at the controls. He has the big SUV dancing into and out of corners like an overgrown go-kart—yes, a go-kart.
With its relative merits as a track weapon and its straightline speed confirmed—0-100 km/h appears in about 3.7 seconds; top speed is 290 km/h—we then pilot the Range Rover Sport SV to a neighbouring off-road course. Here, we gain firsthand experience of the SUV tracking alongside a 31-degree hill and wading through deep water. These obstacles are child’s play for the vehicle, which is fitted with Michelin Pilot Sport all-season tires on optional 23-inch carbon fibre wheels. (For on-track activities, the tires are swapped for special Michelin Pilot Sport S 5 numbers.)
On the open road, the Edition One is an incredibly comfortable vehicle. With those 23-inch wheels, the ride is not as relaxed as might be hoped; it feels a bit jittery on uneven pavement, even in the most relaxed of the drive modes. But visibility is excellent, there’s plenty of space for five passengers and this SUV has the capacity to be a relaxed highway cruiser.
This characteristic is further reinforced by the innovative Body and Soul Seat, which features transducers that allow front-seat passengers to feel the bass notes emanating from the 29-speaker 1430-watt Meridian audio system.
It’s the first production vehicle in the world to feature this system, which was developed by SUBPAC, a technology company with products utilized by top composers and recording artists. This tactile and immersive audio experience not only proves more entertaining, but it also comes with reported health benefits, including relief from fatigue and stress.
There’s a whole lot to like about the 2024 Range Rover Sport SV Edition One. It’s certainly a bold vehicle for the brand and its performance credentials are largely unassailable. There are a few caveats, though.
Starting at $236,555 CAD, it’s priced well above some credible competitors and encroaching on some truly high-net worth entries, such as the Aston Martin DBX, Bentley Bentayga and Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT. Here’s the other thing: Only 600 examples of the Edition One have been made available for all of North American and these 600 are long gone. Pricing for the 2025 Range Rover Sport SV Edition Two starts at $239,019 CAD.