Video: 2014 Land Rover Range Rover Sport
By Cars.com Editors
April 1, 2013
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About the video
From the 2013 New York International Auto Show, Cars.com's Kelsey Mays takes a look at the 2014 Land Rover Range Rover Sport.
Transcript
(upbeat music) Hi, I'm Kelsey Mays for cars.com and we're at the 2013 New York International auto show, looking at Land Rover's latest redesign, the new Range Rover Sport.
Range Rover Sport slots between Land Rover's Range Rover Evoque and the flagship Range Rover itself. It'll be a little difficult to tell them apart now that the Sport adopted sibling's sort of wind swept technical styling. We'll cover what differentiates the Sport, which competes with cars like the Porsche Cayenne and the Mercedes M-Class. Come join us. Range Rover Sport actually looks a little more like the Evoque than the Range Rover. If you look closely, things like vertical sections here, where the fog lights go. If you come along the side, an easy way to tell the three vehicles apart actually is to look at the belt line. The a Range Rover Evoque has a very sharply rising belt line, the Range Rover has a very flat belt line. The Sport has kind of a one that goes in between, rises very gently. Let's take a look inside and see how that affects visibility. It's actually not too bad. The windows don't taper off too much, and so you actually have a lot of visibility looking over your shoulder. The rear head restraints are very big, typical of Land Rover, and they do take up a lot of space if you look straight back. Cabin materials are what you'd expect for kind of a mid tier luxury SUV, lots of leather, leather along the dashboard, there's even stitching around the steering wheel here. Land Rover has ditched the rotary knob in the Range Rover and Range Rover Evoque as a transmission, for this transmission gearshift right here. It's got electronic D tense, very common among luxury car makers now. None of them feel good. And the Range Rover Sport, kind of the same story. Land Rover's terrain response system now has an auto setting, which automatically detects what's around you and adapts the drive trains suspension systems to kind of suit that. If you don't want to use it, you can still rotate over to various modes here. Second row, little bit tight here with leg room. I've got enough, but people who are taller might find that it's a little bit short for them. I'm about six feet tall and that's where I would sit to drive. Headroom is excellent, but the seat could sit a little bit higher off the ground here. My knees are a little bit up in the air, especially given all the extra headroom I wish Land Rover had raised the seat a little bit, very comfortable back here. Plenty of features. We've got individual climate controls in this car at the auto show, heated and cooled seats, very luxurious. There's an occasional use third row, basically it's for kids or teenagers or something like that. It's optional, Land Rover expects, oh 20, 30% of a Range Rover Sport shoppers to eventually buy it. A note about engines. There's actually a supercharged V6 now available. There's also V8s. Less power than before, but the Range Rover Sport, through the use of extensive aluminum parts is 800 pounds lighter than the last Range Rover Sport. That means it's quicker and more fuel efficient, despite having less power. I hear that's like losing a gorilla. Even in its final year on the market, The old Range Rover Sport, outsold the Range Rover and the Range Rover Evoque combined. Its successor, arguably has more reason to use the Range Rover name. Land Rover says that it developed both the Range Rover and the Range Rover Sport together, and so there's a lot of shared components as opposed to last time around when the old Range Rover Sport was on a completely separate platform. Stay tuned for more news because the Range Rover Sport goes on sale this August. (car engine revving)