2006 Range Rover Review, Overview & Specs

One hundred and forty miles per hour. That's the electronically limited top speed of the new supercharged Range Rover Sport, the fastest Land Rover ever built. Say the words out loud: "Land Rover; 140 mph." Sounds strange, no? A bit like hearing "Adam Sandler" and "cultural symposium" in the same sentence.

The dissonance is understandable, of course. Until now, Land Rover has been content to build vehicles that excel at climbing--whether it be off-road obstacles or the social ladder. But with BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, and even Volkswagen now offering premium high-performance SUVs (see "Flexible Flyers," MT April), the British maker can ill afford to be content ruling the Serengeti Plain. Hence, the new supercharged Sport, an asphalt-optimized SUV fast enough to pin Prince Charles's ears flat against his head.

Don't be deceived by that Range Roverish sheetmetal: At its roots, the Sport is an LR3. To create a tidier, nimbler package, Land Rover sliced 5.5 inches out of the LR3's wheelbase (also deleting the LR3's third-row seats) but left the fully independent air suspension essentially intact--albeit tightened up following high-speed development laps at the Nuerburgring. Dynamic Response, a new computer-regulated anti-roll system, is standard on the supercharged Sport, optional on the naturally aspirated HSE version. The blown Sport also gets four-piston Brembo front disc brakes and 20-inch wheels and tires; the HSE makes do without the Brembos and wears 19-inch rubber. Land Rover's outstanding, user-friendly Terrain Response four-wheel-drive system is standard on both models.

In the engine bay of the Sport HSE sits the same Jaguar-sourced, 300-horsepower, 4.4-liter V-8 that serves in the LR3. The supercharged model gets a force-fed, 4.2-liter variant of the engine good for 390 horsepower at 5750 rpm at 410 pound-feet of torque at 3500. Dip your toes into the supercharger, and the Sport responds with an immediate, enthusiastic surge. Land Rover claims a 0-to-60-mph time of 7.2 seconds, a full 1.5 seconds quicker than the LR3 and more than a second quicker than the BMW-powered Range Rover HSE (for 2006, the flagship Range Rover will also receive the Jag engines; the supercharged version good for 400 horses).