2023 Range Rover Sport First Drive: Ostentation on the eve of electrification

MADRID, Spain — The 2023 Range Rover Sport marks several firsts for Land Rover’s luxury-first sub-brand. It’s the first time the sportier take on Land Rover’s iconic luxury SUV is being offered with multiple hybrid powertrains and will become the first to be offered as a pure battery-electric. This generation also brings with it a shift from Land Rover’s tried-and-true (but simultaneously aged) 5.0-liter supercharged V8 to a twin-turbo V8 sourced from BMW. Not many cars are worth crossing an ocean just to test drive, but the new Range Rover Sport makes a convincing case.

So, what puts the “Sport” in Range Rover Sport? A few things, some sportier than others. The platform is shared, but they are separate models for reasons beyond marketing. The Sport is available only in a two-row configuration whereas The Range Rover offers regular wheelbase two-row and long-wheelbase three-row variants. The Sport’s design lives up to its name with a narrower grille and headlights, full-width taillight trim and more greatly pinched rear roofline that’s altogether less stately and more streamlined (pictured below left with The Range Rover below right). It also comes with a less-powerful base engine (more on that later). Most critically, it’s cheaper — by about $20,000. There aren’t any major mechanical differences to explain that, nor a radically different equipment list, but harder-to-quantify, attention-to-detail elements likely play a role. The Sport doesn’t get “the most powerful LED taillamps ever made,” for example.  

Dimensions aren’t appreciably different, which means the Sport is pretty much the largest vehicle you can comfortably weave through the urban hedge maze that is Madrid. In this part of the world, the most substantial passenger car you’ll typically see on the road is something like a Toyota RAV4. I saw more pickups roaming the airfield when my 767 touched down at Barajas International than I would spot throughout the duration of the trip. Two lifted wheelers – a Nissan Patrol and an old Land Cruiser – were the only properly “big” SUVs on the road. The next runner-up? A lonely Porsche Cayenne Coupe.

At 80-plus inches wide, the Rover kisses paint on either side of these narrow business district lanes. For once, my upbringing in an old (by American standards) East Coast town pays dividends, and the Range Rover’s myriad electronic whiskers were surprisingly tolerant of my comfort with putting bits…