It is hard to drive any 550HP car and come away unimpressed.  We worried this Range Rover might be the first.

Nope.  In fact, it is so awesome, we’d pick it over the Cayenne Turbo.  How?  Why?

Read on: 100 new photos and two HD videos to get you onboard.

 

HD Drive Video – 2016 Range Rover Sport SVR

The Range Rover Sport SVR is proudly the fastest, quickest and sportiest Landie ever to wear the green badge.

And after the first few hard corners, you almost wonder what took them so long.

The SVR is absolutely heaven to drive. To the point where we start discussing this car’s most famous driver of 2015: James Bond in SPECTRE!

JOYFUL

The SVR is overjoyed to be alive, like a puppy at two months meeting his new forever family.  Giggly and playful; the SVR’s enthusiasm is contagious.

The smiles it brings are quite special and fairly rare in the super-truck market.The challenge for making a super-fast SUV is that most pair their hugest engines with a rockhard ride and what feel like concrete boots for wheels.

The SVR feels lighter and more immediately torquey than the Macan Turbo test truck we adored earlier this year.  That $105k mid-size SUV and the Cayenne Turbo form the key competitors for this SVR RRS.

And the differences among them all could hardly be more stark. The Porsches drive low and lumpy, with far more sense of crashiness over bumps, yet only slightly better confidence to bomb around corners on full throttle.

The RRS SVR in Dynamic drive mode really delivers a fantastic balance of light, airy ride comfort, incisive and ultra-rapid steering response, and impressive body control with very little sense of old-fashioned Range Rover body lean.

Feeling so light and comfortable inside versus the Porsches is a big achievement: the RRS SVR wears even-more-intense hard-backed buckets for its four main thrones. The large and extra-visible glasshouse of the RRS SVR makes its warp-drive transition even more gr-inducing.

A throttle prod kicks the RRS SVR down the road like it was punted by a Goliath. The eight-speed automatic transmission from ZF is incredible resposive to its shift paddles, but also flawlessly good at picking the right ratios in full auto mode. Such a huge spread of gear ratios, literally zero lag in the torque’s arrival thanks to supercharged induction versus turbo for all its German rivals, and the newly-sharp and precise steering and front end….

The only word to sum up the SVR’s powertrain is:

YESSSS!

Perhaps extended to “Yes, yes, oh God yes, don’t stop!”

Yes, the RRS SVR sounds absolutely fabulous at all times. Yes it pivots like a wolfpack chasing prey. And yes, it is so rear-drive in feel that the tail can be hung out on command — even with standard locking-diff 4×4. Just a fabulous torque shift spread front and back — varying all the way from to 90-percent power to just the back axle.

RRS SVR.

The supertruck YESSSSS-master!  

Try to resist a Yes to all the options available, of course, or the $106k base price can climb into the $121s.

BUT?

The main gripe we have is that the RRS already looks really cool in all its standard trims. We love the giant new bumpers and sill extensions all around, and especially love their body-color finish as standard versus the grey plastic of the cheaper 3.0 SC standard models. The contrast gloss-black for the intakes up front is a very cool detail.

But….  the style outside is pretty subtle versus the clearly-top-dog looks from the X5M or new GLE63 twins.   The bumpers are intense and cool, but not really ‘extreme’ versus factory rivals, and especially versus the many, many custom aero kits for the RRS.

Why do those new bumpers stay so high off the ground, without lower splitter detailing.  This is likely thanks to Land Rover maintaining the SVR’s off-road performance.  Approach and departure angles would be killed by a true race aero kit.

So that would be our only idea for making the SVR better: deeper lower bodywork changes, perhaps in a contrast satin silver to help the SVR be a true Range Rover SuperSport — even among the hearing impaired.

For everyone iside the RRS SVR — and everyone outside in a 3-mile radius — the SVR announces its arrival loud and clear.  A GRRUUMMMMbllattt-master, too!!

HD Exhaust Note Video – 2016 RRS SVR

 

2016 Range Rover Sport SVR Review