In the accompanying video at the bottom of this page, Jaguar Land Rover's chief vehicle engineer Mike Cross wanted one simple question answered. "Could a Range Rover behave like a performance car at the circuit they call the Green Hell?" he posed.
Admittedly, the question is a bit like asking whether Blenheim Palace could behave like Usain Bolt at the 100m, but the stats speak for themselves: the RR SVR lapped the Nürburgring in eight minutes and 14 seconds. The fastest time ever set for a production SUV, no less.
For a big, fat, luxury Range Rover, that's really quite indecently fast. Faster than an old Cayman S. Faster than the Lexus IS-F. Faster than an old BMW M3, Jaguar XKR and many, many other performance machines. It's also - if you believe in one standardised time (which there isn't, really), it's one second off a Merc C63 AMG.
This speed is made possible thanks to the top-spec version of that rather lovely 5.0-litre supercharged V8 JLR builds. In the RR SVR, it produces 542bhp - the same as the Jaguar F-Type Coupe R - and, we assume, the same 502lb ft of torque.
Land Rover tell us they've not only made it fast, but pointy, too, honing the handling characteristics of the SVR at the ‘Ring, "because the undulating circuit's challenging layout represents the ultimate test for high performance vehicles".
The results, we're told, are ‘spectacular', though LR assures us the SVR hasn't compromised its all-terrain ability or comfort, and it features the same 850mm wading depth as other RR Sports.
We'll have some more news on it in a couple of weeks, before it hits showrooms next year. Tell us, is this the kind of car you want to see Land Rover building?
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