We review the Range Rover Sport HSE from price to economy and all its features

THE Range Rover Sport makes you feel like a royal, a rock star (you can see why George Michael refuses to crash in anything else) or, at the very least, the PM sweeping down Whitehall.

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Punters are obviously impressed because sales of the Sport are up this year from 11,000 to 20,000.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS?

What’s not to love? The Sport looks stylish and, well, sporty – it’s wide, quite beefy but still sleeker than the traditional Range Rover. The narrow, squinty headlights have divided the critics but I liked the assertive feel of the front with its big bumper and the tapering rear. Our version had black rear windows and sparkling 20inch alloys too.

HOW DOES IT DRIVE?

We tested the 3-litre SDV6 diesel (engines go up to a 510hp supercharged 5-litre V8 petrol) on a 400-mile round trip from Brighton to Penzance. We stayed resolutely ON-road but there were plenty of opportunities to see what it could do.

Serious petrolheads will quibble about the Sport name – it would be left standing by a Ferrari – but there is plenty of poke in the 3-litre engine. We found it easily handled on roads that have a short burst of uphill dual carriageway then become single-lane again before you know it. You don't have to weigh up whether you might get past the traffic – a light touch of the accelerator and you definitely will. And other cars always get out of your way, even in the outside lane of the motorway.

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The power steering and the aluminium body mean the Sport is very nimble despite its size and it’s surprisingly easy to park. There’s environmentally friendly stop-start technology but no loss of oomph when you need to peel off sharpish from a traffic light.
The cabin is so quiet and the ride so smooth that you need to keep reminding yourself about your speed. 70 feels like 40 and 100 feels like 70. Oops.

WHAT’S IT LIKE INSIDE?

The dashboard was a bit plasticky but you couldn’t fault the comfort of the leather seats, the amount of legroom and headroom or the space in the boot – 784 litres. There’s room for five in comfort and you can also fit in an extra pair of seats.
There are more gadgets than you can shake a stick at, including sat-nav, automatic wipers and lights and front and rear A/C.

We drove the HSE spec with £8,000 worth of extras on the basic £51,000 price, including a superb surround sound system with DAB radio, sliding roof and blind-spot monitoring on the wing mirrors. The latter seemed unnecessary at first but we quickly came to love it. Extras also include screens in the front headrests that the kids can watch while you use the sat-nav.

If there is a niggle it’s that the sat-nav is a bit hard to operate and we didn’t really understand the graphics on the (extra) Park Assist picture from the rear-view camera, so didn’t rely on it.
SIMON COPELAND

VERDICT:
Classy, fun, luxurious and practical, less guzzling than you might think and still £20k cheaper than its big brother. I don’t think I’ll get over this Range Rover.