Land Rover Range Rover Sport review

A high driving position is something that has marked out a Range Rover for decades – and even though the Sport model’s isn’t quite as commanding as the traditional Range Rover’s, it doesn’t disappoint.

The seat is incredibly comfortable and supportive, although the integrated head restraint of the SVR model’s sports seat is set slightly too low to be comfortable for tall drivers. The pedals line up nicely with the seat, though, and the electric steering column offers lots of reach and rake adjustment.

All the controls – including the Terrain Response control that allows you to adjust the car’s dynamic settings to suit the type of surface you’re driving on – are within easy reach on the centre console.

ou climb up onto the driver’s seat, which gives you an excellent view of the road ahead. You can see over hedges, walls and most other vehicles, so potential hazards will be easily spotted. The view also helps when trying to place the car on the road; this is especially useful considering how much of the road the Range Rover Sport takes up.

Your vision directly rearwards and over the shoulder is fine, too. It’s limited a little by the tapering rear side windows, but this is no worse than in most other luxury SUVs. And besides, manoeuvring is aided by standard front and rear parking sensors, as well as a rear-view camera. You can pay extra to get an all-round camera system, which includes front, rear and bird’s eye views, or a self-parking system that’ll slot the car into a space for you.

Fine night-time illumination comes courtesy of standard adaptive LED headlights.

All Range Rover Sports get a pair of 10.0in touchscreens (the same set-up as that in the smaller Velar); one screen sits where you’d expect it to be, towards the top of the dashboard, and the other below it, in front of the gear selector. This second screen is the one that you use to access the air conditioning and off-road modes, but you can also operate the multimedia system through it while the main screen displays the navigation.

This layout gives a minimalist look to the interior that’s certainly appealing, plus the graphics are sharp and there’s only some occasional lag when you select something. But while the menus prove easy enough to navigate when you’re stationary, the lower screen can be distracting to use on the move compared with old-school physical buttons.

It’s also disappointing to note that neither Android Auto nor Apple CarPlay smartphone mirroring is available. There is a free app from Land Rover that gives you a certain amount of smartphone connectivity, but our experience suggests that it can be a bit slow and cumbersome.

The standard of the Range Rover Sport’s interior finish is very high; even if it's not quite as robustly screwed together as the Audi Q7's interior, it certainly has more 'wow' factor. There’s impressive attention to detail on show, from the stitching on the leather upholstery to numerous metal inlays.

Leather upholstery comes as standard, while you can pay extra for more leather to cover the central part of the dashboard and the top of the doors, making the interior feel even more luxurious.

The main area of weakness is the plasticky feel of the switches. You'll feel a greater sense of satisfaction from operating a Q7's precision buttons.