2007 Land Rover Range Rover Sport HSE

Clunky name, cool ride.

Missing the Orange

The Good

Great standard features
Smooth ride
Hot styling with off road capabilities

The Bad

Funereal interior
Wind noise
No orange

The Range Rover Sport is built on the LR3’s platform, making it smaller than a regular Range Rover, even though it looks like the Range Rover’s twin. It’s also slightly smaller than the LR3, which cuts out room for the third row of seating available in an LR3.

The base model Sport comes fully loaded, including navigation. It’s unfortunate that wood trim isn’t included, though, because the black interior on the base model is a sea of depressing black with very little to liven it up other than small metal accents. I normally like black interiors, but not this one. The headliner is beige, providing an odd contrast in the black interior.

The fit and finish of the interior is very nice. In particular I like the feel of the steering wheel – it’s a great size and nice to hang on to. The seats are comfortable and adjust in the normal ways – up, down, back and forth. Power lumbar is included, but it can’t be adjusted up and down, which makes it useless for the very tall or very short. It hits me, the very short, way too high on the back to do any good. After a fairly brief test drive I found myself uncomfortable in the seat, perhaps because of the misplaced lumbar.

The front seats have armrests attached on the side of the seat farthest from the door. At first I thought that was neat, but I whacked my elbow on it several times when turning. I could lower it a bit, but then it does me no good as an armrest - better to just fold it up out of the way.

The rear seat offers plenty of legroom, but the headrests must be adjusted in order to sit in the seats, otherwise they hit even me in mid-back. To fold the seats flat you need to push the headrests back down. Not a huge hassle because you don’t need to push buttons to raise and lower the headrests, but a minor inconvenience for sure.

The trunk is cavernous, at least compared to the other mid-sized SUVs we’ve been looking at, and the back seat folds completely flat in a 60/40 split to accommodate even more.

I had a few issues operating the liftgate. First I went right to where I assumed a handle would be - in the molding above the license plate - and found one but it opened just the glass. So I shut the glass and pressed a large button on the back of the door. I heard a click, but nothing happened. The door didn’t move at all. I couldn’t see an obvious place to pull up on it, either, so I stuck my fingers between the bumper and the liftgate and pried it up from there. I asked the salesman about it later and he pressed the button and raised it using by yanking on the body molding where the glass handle is.

The liftgate is very easy to close, with a well-shaped handle in the door at a height even shorties can reach. The liftgate will not open if the glass is open. A power liftgate is not available.

The Sport was very easy to climb into because it had been lowered to its lowest setting. A simple push of a button raises it to driving height, or higher to climb rocks or forge streams. At its lowest setting it would be easy for shorties to get their children in and out of the child seats in the back.

Visibility is excellent from the driver’s seat. The salesman had me back in into a parking space to show off the reverse sensors, but I found them distracting. When reversing you hear a chime but see no lights – I found I kept looking for lights and prefer the visual cues over the aural ones.

I read in my auto magazines that the Sport is a sluggish ride despite the 300 hp, but it didn’t feel sluggish to me. It certainly isn’t a sports car, but I had no trouble merging onto I-10 in traffic, nor passing people. It is also easy to drive fast because it’s a smooth ride (and fortunately the salesman knows the location of the cop hideaways and probably saved me from a ticket).

Inside the cabin there is a lot of wind noise, enough that I checked to make sure the windows were all up. Driving with the sunroof open on the freeway makes conversation impossible, but there’s no “thump” from the air flow. I was very aware of a low pitched hum on the highway. At first I assumed it was the tires, but it’s the engine growl. Probably sounds great with the windows down, but was a bit distracting with them up since I expected the interior to be quieter.

The stereo is a 550 watt Harmon Kardon, but I didn’t test it much because I wasn’t very comfortable with the salesman and wasn’t sure he’d take kindly to me blasting the Buzz. The steering wheel controls for the radio were very intuitive.

Dual air is standard and the back seat has vents but no controls.

I was disappointed to find the cool orange that Range Rover always uses when advertising the Sport isn’t available anymore, but the color options are more interesting than the ones offered by the German automakers. The Sport is available in 8 different colors, including a deep metallic red.

Overall Impression

I am impressed with the standard features, but the wind noise and dull interior will make me think twice about anteing up the $57,950 needed to take this bad boy home.