Land Rover introduce us to its pinnacle, the Range Rover SVR
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For quite some time Land Rover has been promising an even sportier Range Rover Sport. And now it's here. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Range Rover SVR – the fastest Land Rover ever to grace our roads.
So, it's fast you say…
Yes, very, very fast. With 406kW and a planet shifting amount of torque (610Nm to be exact), the SVR will hit 100km/h in 4.5 seconds and go on to reach 260km/h. Not too shabby for a spacious, practical, two-tonne beast.
That is fast, but how about some context to the numbers…
Well, as is the fashion these days, Land Rover has thrown its new megabomb around the Nürburgring – a perilous 20.832km race track comprising 73 demanding bends – which the SVR managed in eight minutes and 14 seconds, making it faster than the Lexus IS-F, original Honda NSX and as quick as a Merc C63 AMG.
I'm convinced, tell me more…
Under the skin sits Jaguar's marvellous 5.0-litre all-aluminium supercharged V8 pinched from the F-Type R. There's uprated suspension, firmer bushings and recalibrated torque vectoring too.
That monolithic power reaches all four wheels through a ZF eight-speed automatic gearbox. The engineering boffins at LR managed to reduce shift times by a whopping 50 per cent – and added throttle blipping on downshifts for good measure. Noise comes courtesy of a two-stage active exhaust to give a 'racecar-inspired' soundtrack at higher revs, while maintaining the Rover's civility when pottering about town.
Otherwise there's lots of SVR badging, a spoiler, some massive grills down the side and quad exhaust pipes at the back. Brakes, which you'll most definitely need, are courtesy of Brembo and have six-pistons – and you can ask LR to paint them in one of six colours.
I'm sold, to whom do I make the cheque?
Just hold your horses, because there's the not so small matter of price. It's £93,450 over in the UK. That's a lot of Rands should Land Rover decide to bring them to sunny South Africa. So, do you still want one?