THE USURPER

THE RANGE ROVER Sport was designed specifically to get away with the sort of antics the full-size Range Rover was too grown up and a tad too aristocratic to perform.

- PARTH CHARAN

The tweedy Range Rover, in all its beigeness, is a monarch’s SUV, failing which it is a diplomat’s preferred mode of conveyance. The bottom line: Few things signify rank and stature quite like the unflappable and eternally stoic Range Rover. The Sport, however, is the extrovert of the pack. Still a pedigreed, card- carrying member of the revered Range Rover family, it pioneered the whole “performance SUV” thing back when those two words operated within a very different vernacular. Today it’s not uncommon to find large, square-shaped torpedoes barrelling down B-roads with the urgency of the Bat mobile and the momentum of a charging bison. So the Range Rover Sport must, like all storied sub-brands, feature the best of everything—performance, opulence, and comfort.

Land Rover c much of its present-day profits thanks to the rapidly proliferating Range Rover family and it’s easy to see why. Every time a new model pops up, I remain unshaken in the belief that it is the best a Range Rover has looked, and therefore, the best an SUV can look. Until the next one arrives. Up till now the Range Rover Velar served the longest tenure in my “best- looking Range Rover” club, but I’m afraid it must pass the title to the minimalistic masterpiece that is the new Sport. Although it isn’t considerably smaller than its grander sibling, the raked angles on the A and D pillars do a very convincing job of distinguishing this as the more athletic sibling.