CLUBHOUSE | DRIVING RANGE
Sporty Number
The 2014 Range Rover Sport is the fastest Land Rover ever made, but that’s only one of the reasons why Ben Oliver will be getting his order in promptly.
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But will the car live up to the hype? The omens ny concerns we might have had about Jaguar and Land Rover being bought by India’s Tata conglomerate have surely now been are good. The Sport, as the name suggests, is answered by the hail of well-received and even world-beating new lower, more agile and more road-oriented than the more stately, upright Range Rover relaunched products that have come from the two brands since. Almost all the other famous car marques live in the shelter last year, although it retains the impressive offof the big carmaking groups. Volkswagen owns Bentley and road ability a Land Rover must always display. Lamborghini and Porsche. BMW owns Mini and Rolls-Royce. They benefit from Like the bigger car, the new Sport is made of shared technologies and economies of scale that we worried would be denied to aluminium, cutting an incredible 400 kilograms from its mass, to the great benefit of performance, JLR under Tata’s ownership. But any worry was misplaced. The new Evoque, Range Rover and Jaguar handling and emissions. This new car is more obviously spor ting in look s, with F-Type, all previously reviewed within these pages, have been The Sport more fluid styling than the old, slightly launched on Tata’s watch to huge critical acclaim and there retains the militaristic model. has been a raft of minor model additions and upgrades too. Not that buyers were in any way The latest all-new model is this Range Rover Sport, which impressive deterred: prior to the arrival of the more was introduced at the New York auto show in April with a old-road ability affordable, higher-volume Evoque, the level of drama that probably left the American carmakers a Land Rover Range Rover Sport was Land Rover’s feeling rather upstaged on their home turf. Whole sections of must always biggest selling model, outselling even Manhattan were closed to traffic to shoot a short action film of the entry-level Freelander in 2012, even James Bond actor Daniel Craig ‘delivering’ the new car to the display. as it neared the end of its life. Much of star-studded launch party the night before the show opened; culminating, of course, in Craig driving the new model off the screens and into the that success was due to its huge and growing venue. It was a bold, confident statement from a company whose product and popularity in China, but the new model seeks to extend its popularity everywhere with a powerfinancials both look right. 24
HK Golfer・MAY 2013
HKGOLFER.COM
SCORECARD
Range Rover Sport Supercharged
How much?
US $79,995 (Hong Kong pricing TBA)
Engine:
5.0-litre V8, 510hp
Transmission:
Eight-speed ZF automatic
Performance: 0-100kph in 5secs Four Wheel Drive How heavy?
2,144kgs
operated third row of seats for growing families, and the option later of a downsized, 2.0-litre fourcylinder engine and, in some markets, a dieselelectric hybrid, both made possible by the new model’s much reduced weight. Me? I’d still stick with the range-topping 510PS supercharged V8 petrol that will offer ballistic performance in the lighter car: its 100kph time of just five seconds makes it the fastest Land Rover ever made. And I’d be getting my order in just as quickly, to avoid the queues. HKGOLFER.COM
HK Golfer・MAY 2013
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