2023 Range Rover Sport Is an Elite Crossover Flex

Automakers must feel relieved by America’s bottomless taste for crossovers. Why? Just look at most. As a category, they’re hardly a pretty crowd. This isn’t Mercedes-Benz or Ferrari in the 1960s. It’s not even Volvo at its best. Far too many of these “barges” look about as pretty as that noun suggests. And then there’s the 2023 Range Rover Sport – the exception, not the rule. It looks like you’ve arrived. you did your number You are someone. It announces all this effortlessly. There’s no hood scoop or annoying metal folds: no bombast.

It’s just rock solid, beautiful, with a muscular shoulder line and 22-inch wheels that give just the right attitude. In other words, like a great sports car – and unlike too many of its brethren in the crossover/SUV ranks – all the proportions are spot on. But you have to ask: What is it like to drive a car? Why else would I want one? We have answers.

Suspension is the golden ticket

Few companies, other than perhaps Jeep, are as committed to off-road capability as Land Rover. This has been the case since the company was founded in the late 1940s. Yes, the English brand emphasizes this skill and offers owners the opportunity to glamp and drive in various off-road theme parks worldwide. But they also know that their customers drive on tarmac most of the time. Luckily, the same kind of technology that allows a Range Rover Sport to easily articulate its chassis over boulders (11.1 inches of ground clearance) also holds its mass tight when cornering.

Air shocks (rather than spring-loaded) shocks are networked to the sport’s cameras, which spy on upcoming corners and connect to the GPS, monitoring the road surface 500 times per second. Instead of a too-hard ride when you don’t want to, or a feeling of being hunched over when you decide to pound through some eaters, the Range Rover Sport’s chameleons are suited to the conditions and your next whim.

It’s always ready to perform, but it doesn’t agonize you or your passengers to deliver that ability. There’s a word for that: attitude.

2023 Range Rover Sport knows how to rush

While you can get yours with a thirsty V-8, the powertrain of choice is the 395hp hybrid flat-six in the Range Rover Sport Dynamic SE. It costs $91,475 – but that’s far less than the $123,000 for the P530 First Edition. Sure, the latter’s 4.4-liter V8 hits harder at 523 horsepower, but the reality is you don’t really need it. The hybrid goes from 0 to 60 in just over 5 seconds. That’s hardly slow.

If you get the handling package with all-wheel steering, it improves cornering ability while also making it easier to maneuver in parking lots. You’re getting the best possible version of a five-passenger shooter SUV that jumps when you want it while delivering better fuel economy: 18 cities/26 highways compared to the V-8’s 16 cities/21 highways.

One caveat: A plug-in hybrid is on the way and that will bring better fuel economy and a predicted EV-only range of around 40 miles. You can put this version on the dealer’s order book called the P440e.

The cabin digs are gorgeous

Land Rover was ahead of the curve when it came to premium non-leather options. The Range Rover Sport, for example, has plastic seats with 20-fold adjustability and a massage function. These feel like leather but have a quarter of the carbon footprint. Oh, and they’re incredibly supportive. On a five-hour ski trip, we struggled to pry ourselves out of the ultra-comfortable digs to get onto the slopes.

Rear-seat passengers also get heated seats, and those rear perches also fold forward electrically and split to allow for ski-through.

As we’ve seen with brands like Mercedes-Benz, Land Rover includes cabin air filtration down to the bacterial level, even reducing the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. You can set the car to pre-condition the cabin on a timer to heat and cool, and purify the cabin air before boarding.

Once there, the superb clarity of the 29-speaker Meridian Signature Sound System is hard to miss. All four outer seats have headrest speakers, effectively “centering” the audio source at each of these positions in the car. Have you heard the false claim that “there is no bad seat in the house”? It’s actually true here, and it’s encouraged because the Sport’s audio system uses active noise cancellation to nearly eliminate road and tire noise. It’s not as quiet as EVs we’ve recently tested. If that’s what you want, just wait a year for Range Rover to promise to electrify several vehicles in its line.

Yes, it’s still the bomb in the field

It was only a matter of time before an automaker added cruise control to off-road use. The usual mode settings for driving on asphalt are overlaid with specific off-road settings. You essentially choose the amount of grip as well as the pace you need for 4×4 driving. You still have to drive, but a system that moves you as slowly and smoothly as you like, and that always detects wheelspin so you don’t get stuck, allows the driver to just relax and focus on the steering focus. Oh, and of course, multiple onboard cameras let you see what’s happening on both sides of your British tank – under and in front – so you don’t scrape the pretty paint smashing its way through a hemlock forest.

Yes, some riders might prefer the challenge of having to do everything manually, from stepping on the gas over boulders to hitting the brakes enough to maintain grip while coasting down the back of a muddy descent. Hey, if that’s you, Jeep still makes the Wrangler.

Land Rover is betting you’ll want to navigate the hustle and bustle of city traffic during the weekdays with the Range Rover Sport And Dirt dual lane in the forest at the weekend. We think they are spot on.

[Starting at $83,000; landroverusa.com]

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