Hot Range Rover Sport becomes fastest production SUV
The Range Rover Sport SVR has become the fastest production SUV to lap the Nürburgring with a time of eight minutes and fourteen seconds – just 10 seconds slower than the lightweight and super-fast Alfa Romeo 4C.
A Land Rover test driver took the big 4x4 around the deadly, 13-mile Nordschleife track, which has regularly been used for testing since safety concerns ended its time as a Formula 1 track in 1976.
The new SVR made its dynamic debut at June’s Goodwood Festival of Speed and returned to Germany to continue its test schedule, which involves hours of pounding around the undulating, twisty track.
Mike Cross, Land Rover’s chief engineer for vehicle integrity, said: “The Nürburgring is a benchmark for vehicle development and testing, and cars become stronger, more durable and faster over its 13 miles and 70-plus corners. We wanted to see whether an SUV could behave like a performance car in this challenging environment. The results are spectacular and the Range Rover Sport SVR has demonstrated outstanding on-road performance capabilities.”
Fitted with the same 5.0-litre, supercharged V8 as the Jaguar F-Type R, the SVR has a maximum power output of 550hp – 40hp more than the current Range Rover Sport V8 Supercharged. No official performance figures have been released as yet, but with the existing V8 Supercharged accelerating to 62mph in just 5.3 seconds and topping out at 155mph, the more powerful SVR is likely to improve on those numbers. A 0-62mph time of about 5.0 seconds seems entirely possible and there is speculation that the most powerful Land Rover ever may even match sister company Jaguar’s ‘R-S’ models’ 186mph top speed.