2016 Land Rover Range Rover Sport HSE Td6

This is the epitome of what this Range Rover Sport means to me: It’s the ultimate go-anywhere grand touring vehicle.

- William Walker

With a barren desert highway stretching out toward the horizon, I sat relaxed as the warm evening air whipped through the cabin. This was my last hurrah behind the wheel of my long-term Range Rover Sport HSE Td6, and what a hurrah it was.

It’s hard to imagine that I could be cruising across the desert floor at autobahn speeds in perfect comfort when just moments before I was driving through towering sand dunes going places most vehicles could never even imagine going. We had just finished filming an episode of Ignition in which Jonny Lieberman and Ken Block took two Ford Raptors into Dumont Dunes park near Death Valley. Throughout a day of drifting, jumping, and driving up the sides of mountainous dunes, a number of support vehicles and one of the usually unstoppable Raptors found themselves trapped in deep sand. The Range Rover rescued them all.

This one day, this one moment even, is the epitome of what this Range Rover means to me— it’s the ultimate luxury go-anywhere grand touring vehicle. To say my time with it has spoiled me is an understatement. How do I come back from this?

My year with our Range Rover Sport Td6 started by chance. Angus MacKenzie, the Rover’s original chaperone, had just moved to England. The logical choice to replace him in his duties, editor-in-chief Ed Loh, needed a larger vehicle to accommodate his morning surf outings. I happily surrendered my long-term Honda Pilot in exchange.