Range Rover Sport SVR to roar at Goodwood
BY RICHARD BERRY | 25th Jun 2014
The announcement came overnight and although Land Rover has not given away too many details ahead of its reveal the Indian-owned car-maker has released teaser videos and several images of the Range Rover Sport SVR testing at the Nurburgring Nordschleife track in Germany.
It will be the first Land Rover to wear the SVR badge, an acronym that stands for Special Vehicle Racing, which will be the new high performance line for Land Rover.
The Range Rover Sport SVR is the first product to come out of Jaguar Land Rover Special Operations, a new division which produces high performance and bespoke cars for the company.
The Jaguar Project 7 – which will also debut at Goodwood – is another recent creation to come out of this special division.
In the announcement, Land Rover said a camouflaged prototype Range Rover Sport SVR will be revealed at the festival and perform runs up the Goodwood Hill course in the First Glance category.
Land Rover has not released any performance specifications for the SVR apart from saying it will produce 404kW, which is exactly the same output produced by the 5.0-litre supercharged V8 lurking under the bonnet of the Jaguar F-Type S Coupe.
This is a 29kW boost over what is currently the most powerful model variant in Range Rover Sport line-up, the 375kW V8 HSE Dynamic.
Range Rover is clearly pushing the Sport SVR’s high-performance credentials, with images and video showing it on the track at the Nurburgring while dressed in a livery made up of images of the car in various testing situations.
The clip begins with the program’s chief engineer Mike Cross explaining that the Nurburgring is a brutal test bed for cars.
“The question we wanted answered was could a Range Rover behave like a performance car at the circuit they call the Green Hell,” Mr Cross says in the clip.
“We always knew there was more to come from the Range Rover Sport, it had a super-stiff light-weight aluminium structure, a powerful engine and a state-of-the-art driveline. We enrolled the car into our Nurburgring development program and the results are spectacular.” The clip shows the Range Rover Sport SVR in action is shown as it roars its way through a lap with Nurbugring Test Centre manager Phil Talboys at the wheel.
“With this version of the Range Rover sport I think we’ve unleashed its full potential,” Mr Talboys says, explaining that Land Rover has made major revisions to the all-wheel drive chassis and the eight-speed ZF gearbox, adding that the anti-roll system has been tuned to allow flatter and faster cornering.
Mr Cross then drops a hint about the results of the Nurburgring tests: “We’re able to lap the Nordschleife at a time more akin to a sportscar than an SUV.” The Nurburgring Nordschleife lap-time is an ultimate score board of sorts in the performance car world. Porsche’s Cayenne Turbo set an SUV benchmark in 2012 of 8:17.00. The 2014 Range Rover Sport recorded a lap time of 8:35.00 last year.
Perhaps a hint of the lap-time can be found in the camouflaged livery of the Range Rover Sport SVR shown in the images and clips – if you look closely at the bumper and on the side skirts a number can be seen. It looks like 00.02:8. Read it in reverse and it is 8:20.00.
Whether this is Land Rover cheekily revealing the lap-time or not remains to be seen as the British luxury marque is remaining tight-lipped on any performance figures at this stage.
The model year 2015 Range Rover will be available to order locally from August this year with first deliveries starting in November, while Land Rover Australia says it expects the Sport SVR to arrive here in March, 2015.
